Donating Blood

In a number of ways, the place I work makes it easy to do good works.
As an example, regular blood drives are held on campus.

This means the good folks from Carter Blood Care show up on a particular day, and you can just wander over there and give blood.  (Once you pass "inspection," of course.)

This is a time of year when blood donation centers have a smaller supply (traveling for the holidays makes it harder to go and donate), but there is also a bigger need for blood and blood products (most horribly because there are more car wrecks - due to bad driving conditions, or the use of awareness-altering substances such as alcohol, or various combinations of other unfortunate events).  So, here's an idea for a holiday season good work: donate blood.  For a pretty small time investment - you could be in and out in under an hour! - you could give a gift that literally saves a life.

If a blood donation center isn't conveniently located for you / you're feeling ambitious, you might be able to organize a blood drive at your school / place of employment / church / community center.  I get the impression this isn't too hard to do, but haven't tried it myself.  If you're in DFW and want to talk to Carter about organizing a blood drive, start here.
The Red Cross is another popular place to donate blood.

Have you organized a drive before?  Tell us about that in the comments.

Have you donated blood?  Was it satisfying?
Did you get a cookie?

I was once a very regular blood donor - I've got the scars on my median cubital vein to prove it!  Then I traveled to Tanzania for my dissertation work.  Twice.  And took anti-malarial drugs for several months.  I had to abstain from donation for a couple years.  I enjoyed donating again once I was eligible.

Then I was pregnant.  No one thinks you should donate blood if you're pregnant.  You're already pretty metabolically stressed, to be fair.

But now I'm neither at risk for Malaria nor pregnant, so earlier this month, I got to donate blood again!  I'm up to a few pints with Carter, and had reached the gallon mark at Memorial Blood Center in Minneapolis when I lived there.  I was pretty proud of that; and bummed that my previous "record" couldn't follow me when I moved.  I'll have to keep my own tally now, I suppose.

On another note - there are a number of things that make you ineligible to donate blood: having certain diseases, taking certain medications, being less than 110 pounds (the weight is absolutely not a problem for me)... that sort of thing.  Travel to certain areas can also make you ineligible (my number one reason for being rejected as a blood donor).  Also, if you are a man, having sex with another man makes you ineligible. Regardless of the context or anything else.  Because apparently heterosexual sex never puts you at risk for HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases?  (Sarcasm alert.)
I do take issue with that.
But, it used to be the case that you had to wait a year after a piercing or tattoo to donate, and now it's OK after several weeks, as long as you promise that you went to a legit tattoo parlor that uses sterile, one-time use needles.  So I'm hopeful that blood donation centers will be able to accept more donors in future.  We certainly need them.

I still donate blood, because gay men might still need blood products.

If needles give you the heebie-jeebies (or you can't donate for some other reason, like being anemic) but you really want to get involved with this worthy cause, most blood donation centers need plenty of volunteers (call to set up / remind folks about their appointments, stock the donor canteen...), or you could organize a blood drive and let people who don't mind needles get poked.

Lifetime blood donations by TBV:
1 gallon, 3 pints