Giving Blood

Forum Sponsor
TwistedKestrel said:
Do you get any special treatment, being type O?
Click to expand...

none that i can tell, other than frequent phone calls

Baggsy said:
I thought that was O-?

I'm A+ (the other big group), so I get phoned once a week, when I don't donate.
Click to expand...

actually, i don't have a medical background, i'm just repeating what i have been told over the years by the intake staff at red cross/cbs. that being said, i'm not actually certain if i'm + or -. . .i am sure about the o part, tho.

i will echo what lil sushi wrote, however.

the process has become much more elaborate as people are travelling, and illnesses have been introduced to the system. precautions after the krever commission have made blood donation a somewhat selective process, with more and more exclusions.

also, over the years, donating blood has taken progressively longer and longer in my experience. i seem to remember the process taking a bit more than 30 mins when i started donating. nowadays, i'm pretty happy to get out of there in less than an hour, hour-fifteen. . .

that being said, it's totally worth it to do. i have an appt. in an hour to donate, and won't miss it. . .
 
While I understand it may be somewhat inconvenient, I've never personally experienced much of this.

It takes an hour. I hope I never need blood and if I do need blood I hope someone decided to take that hour to give blood.

I have several tattoos, plus have not only visited, but lived abroad. It's just really not that difficult and for the average person, you're really not visiting Mexico all that often to stop doing it.
 
I gave once May of /77, 2 yrs earlier than I was suppose to, it was the cool thing to do that day in high school. I tried again in the mid-eighties but they refused me. I had a brief hook up with a needle addict
in /83 and they still won't take my blood. If I had HIV you would think it would have showed sometime in the last 28 yrs.
 
I would expect with the advance in technology we would be genetically engineering pigs to produce human blood.

On a different note, I've heard they are coming close to the production of artificial blood. That should be interesting
 
RockerGuy said:
I would expect with the advance in technology we would be genetically engineering pigs to produce human blood.

On a different note, I've heard they are coming close to the production of artificial blood. That should be interesting
Click to expand...

That's for the vampires not us...
 
I used to give blood and was also a platelet donor however Canadian Blood Services let me know that because I am a Happy Homo, my blood is as good as poison. Always ****** me off - a hetero can be a total s!ut and give without any hassles, a homo can't give no matter what :mad:

Oh yeah, I also have AB+, an uncommon blood type.
 
Ever since the tainted blood scandal of the 80s, Canadian Blood Services have be come extremely strict on who can donate blood. They used to call me constantly because their list of qualified donors that are willing to donate isn't very long compared to the population. So those who can and will are called upon as much as possible. Put the shoe on the other foot. If you needed a blood transfusion, wouldn't you want the cleanest, purest, blood available? Or would any blood do in a pinch?
 
LiNK666 said:
That's for the vampires not us...
Click to expand...

Found the article:

http://www.physorg.com/news198221258.html

revrandy said:
I used to give blood and was also a platelet donor however Canadian Blood Services let me know that because I am a Happy Homo, my blood is as good as poison. Always ****** me off - a hetero can be a total s!ut and give without any hassles, a homo can't give no matter what :mad:

Oh yeah, I also have AB+, an uncommon blood type.
Click to expand...
They probably think "gay" is contagious :D
 
CrazyKell said:
While I understand it may be somewhat inconvenient, I've never personally experienced much of this.

It takes an hour. I hope I never need blood and if I do need blood I hope someone decided to take that hour to give blood.

I have several tattoos, plus have not only visited, but lived abroad. It's just really not that difficult and for the average person, you're really not visiting Mexico all that often to stop doing it.
Click to expand...

agreed. although it did take 1:20 yesterday from walk in to walk out yesterday, and that's with totally skipping the (delicious) baked goodies and juice/coffee at the end. despite that, it was well worth it, and although i plan on getting some ink done later this summer, i'll go back to donating as soon as the exemption window closes.

revrandy said:
I used to give blood and was also a platelet donor however Canadian Blood Services let me know that because I am a Happy Homo, my blood is as good as poison. Always ****** me off - a hetero can be a total s!ut and give without any hassles, a homo can't give no matter what :mad:
Click to expand...

agreed. i've never understood the logic behind this. . .clean blood is clean blood, whether from a hetero or homosexual, imho.

RockerGuy said:
They probably think "gay" is contagious :D
Click to expand...

lol, hopefully not. hiv is contagious, but they put all blood through screening anyways (at least that's what they claim), so it's not a legit argument. perhaps they are profiling gay men as promiscuous and therefore more likely to have other std's that they don't screen for? still discriminatory imo, as us 'straights' could just as easily have std's. . .
 
No medical screening test is perfect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_test#Accuracy_of_HIV_testing

They profile the donors to lower the subsequent risk of false negatives. It's not an assumption based on the imagined behavior of homosexuals, but based on studies of the population of North America. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/msm/index.htm

It eliminates a large donor pool, yes. Maybe one day when we have an even better way of screening for HIV, CBS will decide to accept donations from homosexuals. But as it stands, it is done so that there is not an extra one in one million transfusion that results in an HIV infection.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
No medical screening test is perfect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_test#Accuracy_of_HIV_testing

They profile the donors to lower the subsequent risk of false negatives. It's not an assumption based on the imagined behavior of homosexuals, but based on studies of the population of North America. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/msm/index.htm

It eliminates a large donor pool, yes. Maybe one day when we have an even better way of screening for HIV, CBS will decide to accept donations from homosexuals. But as it stands, it is done so that there is not an extra one in one million transfusion that results in an HIV infection.
Click to expand...

that cdc source suggests that 53% of hiv cases are in the gay community. that also means that 47% (almost half) is not.

47% of all people with hiv are hetero.

yes, large numbers of hetero people do not have hiv. . .just like large numbers of gay men do not have hiv. . .
 
If I went to Jamaica last weekend (also Cancun within 12 months) they will reject me giving blood? Saves me the trouble of going if so.
 
Amazon said:
I have donated, 'cause even getting blood work done I get super light headed and almost pass out. But I have helped out at a blood donor clinic, I thought since it probably wouldn't be the best idea for me to donate, i might as well help with it.
Click to expand...

Its probably likely that your blood pressure has dropped and your brain is not receiving enough blood/O2. Maybe you can get some juice/water after they pull the pin. That should bring things back to pressure.

On a 2nd note, I've heard in emergency circumstances that coconut water can be used if there is no blood around. Its sterile and has all the ions, lol. Maybe rrmedic can chime in.

LiNK666 said:
It's not that I don't want to give my blood it's just that they don't want it.
Click to expand...
They know u mess around too much on GTAM, so they don't want anything to do with you :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom