Giving blood

Do you donate blood? I do, or at least I did!

Just a bit of background for my curious whim...

My Dad and Grandpa Lofty were regular blood donors. Dad and Mom eloped to Queenstown when permission was not given for them to marry. Old man swore vengeance on Dad for this dastardly act, stealing his precious daughter! My Dad and his new bride returned to East London but he cautiously avoided Lofty. But one time when my Dad went to donate blood, he saw Lofty donating blood already. He had no choice but to go and greet the Old Man, he received a grumpy reply, strangely from then on they became fast friends. This story charmed me as I was great friends with my Grandpa.

Drop by drop you save a life

(my medal for 100 donations)

I donated blood regularly from 1984. I am from a common blood group (A+). I enjoyed donating and felt like I
was doing my small part for the community by helping those who need blood.
I have donated about 128 pints over the years and it was a routine occurrence, no drama, no
theatrics, just go donate, eat the cookies, drink the juice, and then go home. This pattern was repeated in 6 weekly
cycles. Then I got a job at a company out of town and they were never interested in donating, so I never donated often over the last five or six years. Then the tumour and radiation treatment, blood donating had to be put on hold for the next five years.

Well that was until my family decided that they too want to donate blood.

It started with my wife.
As you have figured out from my previous posts, this is a complicated woman with her own very unique set of strange quirks and hang ups. To help you understand her a little better in this context, she is TERRIFIED of needles and she also
has a HUGE guilt complex (I won’t say she suffers from it). This works out perfectly for the Blood Bank because her blood group happens to be AB+ which is quite rare and therefore a much needed blood group. It just has to said that the little children need blood and she is there!
So the big day arrives. She psycs herself up and upon her arrival at the clinic, promptly fills in all the required forms. Well the needle prick on the finger just about finishes her off. She hopes and wishes that the blood drop that is placed into the vial of blue liquid does not sink to the bottom.
Alas!! The treacherous blood drop does not follow her wishes and sinks rapidly. She is eligible to donate, the horror cannot stop, the donation must continue.
So her turn comes round. As her bum touches the fold out stretcher and the tears start pouring down her cheeks. Well this throws all the nurses because they have not even started yet. She tells them to ignore her and to carry on. As it turned out, they then discovered her blood group and now she gets phone calls, sms’s, and e-mails begging her to come in and donate blood on a regular basis. She does go in and has donated 10 units, they have all been with a lot of drama though. One donation resulted in the needle going right through the vein which gave her a large bruise that was worn and displayed with pride. All observers cooed with sympathy and admiration for her, which was all
lapped up. Another time she started to feel faint and was whipped backwards in the chair, a cold
pack placed on her chest and staff fanning her till she felt better.

But this seems to be the norm for most of the family.
My oldest daughter Tanith, started donating and her sessions are like mine. Business like, no drama, and to the point (pardon the pun).

(the FIRST donation, proud of her older sister who is nervous in background)

This brings me to my second and third daughters. They too decided that they wanted to donate.
They want to take forward the noble tradition of donating from where I left off.

So off we go, the whole tribe of us, on a noble quest!
We tell the prospective first time donors to make sure that they have eaten beforehand. They assure us that they have eaten. We arrive at the blood donation clinic and inside we see that they have three lazy boy chairs in a row.

(No 2 nervously waiting to give her first)

To be a supportive dad, I sit in the middle one with a girl located on either side. They start with Shae (no 2), she insists
that they put a sheet of paper over her donating arm, so the needle is not seen by her when it is in her arm.

(don't show me the needle!)

The blood is starting to flow nicely but all too soon, they suddenly see that her complexion has changed from a healthy pink glow to “white as a sheet”. All activity starts around her, vigorous fanning, removal of the needle, she is tipped back in the chair and pampered till she feels better.

(not feeling too good)

Later she confesses she hasn’t eaten anything but she couldn’t because she was “angry”.

In the meantime, Kiera (no 3) already has the biscuit tray and is ploughing through the pink wafer cookies like there is no tomorrow.

(No 3 hammering the biscuits)

The blood is starting to pump out of her vein as well. She is watching all the commotion with her older sister. The staff joke with her that she must not be like her sister, she assures them she won’t. Kiera whose complexion is a white shade of pale, being a red head (and she has red lip stick on); started to be affected by her sibling’s plight. So we don’t notice that she too, is losing colour. All of a sudden, Kiera groans out, “ I don’t feel too good”, but before anybody can help her, she projectile vomits. She turns her head while in the process, so instead of it all falling on her lap, the concentrated pink coloured vomit shoots down the side of the chair, and also into the tray of equipment on the stand next to her. It oozes into every little crevice and crack that it can find. Kiera is now crying while the nurses are desperately trying to get the needle out, without touching the vomit. We are all watching this in mild fascination and nausea, to say nothing at all about the embarrassment. The one nurse was super angry and not impressed at all with how her day has turned out. In the meantime, the male nurse was joking that Kiera had brought up almost all the pink biscuits that she had consumed. He was quite gallant about the whole disaster and constantly reassured the Guilty Ones. Soon, it was all cleaned up and the clinic was back to normal. After a while we were ready to leave. We ask the male nurse when they can come again (as this visit has yielded no blood), and he says in a few weeks. But as we walk out the door, the angry female nurse says that we should only come back in a year’s time.

A gloomy end to a venture promising so much in community spirit. Indeed the flesh was weak, even though the spirit was willing.

Well both girls have since been able to donate in Pretoria with much, much less drama. Shae however, still needs the sheet of paper over her arm.

(success at last!)

Michele is due to donate again, but she will need a few more days to work up the courage...