If I were a good man, I'd talk with you more often than I do · 12:53am Sep 1st, 2018
I've been trying to get in at least one blog per month just to make sure I do something here. Sure I check in every day, read a bit on Fridays, all that, but I wanted to do a bit more. So this serves as my self-mandated August post, just in under the wire.
What I want to talk about is something new but with an old origin, and given my in ability to finish projects, it's rather fitting. So let's start with a picture from mid-September 2012 which requires some explanation.
My pudgy little arm with a rather old Pinkie Pie blind bag on our, at the time, rather new couch
Bluebook took that picture when I got home from work after the blood drive at VL&E. I'd worked there for less than a year at that point and it was the second or third drive they've had, but my first, my absolute first. EQD had run a promo for some group's drive, something with Nurse Redheart of course, and you were supposed to take a pic and send it in. They were going to draw for prizes or something, but it didn't matter because I never did send anything in. But it got me started, and except for a few rejections due to low red counts and the hip hiatus, I've kept going.
The day after this year's TrotCon, I showed up, during a torrential rain you know, at a local drive to complete my third gallon. Part of the motivation to keep up with it has been the Red Cross phone app. Well, pre-phone app in my case: I started out by using it on an iPod Touch. It is pretty simple as apps go: you've got a mobile donor card, reminders, tallies, and badges.
Well all like to collect those stinking badges
And yes, there are 24 pints in three gallons, and that number is off. It is really donation attempts, which include two low red count deferments and my latest donation last Sunday. And like the Pinkie Pie picture, that last donation was another first: platelets.
Twice in August I got pleas from the Red Cross to donate platelets, because apparently everybody's at the beach or something. I knew it was different for the typical donation, and that you were supposed to keep your red cells, which I'm a laggard at producing, and I knew it would take longer, but I though, why the hell not do something new? By gawd was that boring: two hours of sitting there pretty much immobilized, telling myself my nose wasn't itching, pretending my bladder wasn't filling up, all while a machine was making its best Walter Mitty noises. To keep everyone sane, they had a TV with closed captioning on which was like the murder channel or something 
. Next time the iPad gets loaded with a two hour playlist of the happiest stuff I can imagine.
But I survived, and the guy who unhooked me at the end I recognized, as he'd worked the drives at VL&E in the past. So I asked to see what had taken two hours to pump out of me: how much is there? Is it like regular blood looking stuff? Nope. More like a tablespoon or two of the fat you'd get off chicken, and a partially filled bag of plasma that looked more like urine... which then reminded me I need to go to the bathroom.
With that all done I helped myself to a ton of coffee and a half dozen Oreos while I read all their literature and found out how important platelets are to cancer patients and what a short shelf life they have, and then important to my greedy little badge collecting mind, how often you can donate: twenty-four times a year.
Now I doubt I'll keep up with that, but it means I can easily beat my four to five whole blood donations I've been averaging. So now plan to set up a schedule I can stick with. And I'm sure the Red Cross won't forget about me, and the app will help with getting it all done. Yes, let's talk about some more gamification in the app. They've got the concept of teams.
Yeah, the whole team is me, and that's where you come in...
I don't think I made that team, but maybe I did. I seem to recall it existing and being empty and I just joined, but anyway it is there and it is just me and has been for years. Now, before I get too far into trying to encourage you to join, yes, I know not everybody is permitted to donate. For gawd's sake, they make you look over the literature every damn time, so I should be able to recite as the restrictions by now. And am painfully aware that lots of people have problems with the restrictions, but you know what? I can do just about as much about that as I can about people having cancer, which is damn near nothing. And the exclusions are myriad, reducing the pool of potential donors way more than I imagined.
When I was at a VL&E drive, Wally, one the most reliable donors, an amiable guy who looks like Charlie Weaver, got deferred for a year. Why? He took a cruise with his wife to Mexico or some place. And the guy who worked next to me? Deferred for life because when he was a kid, and his dad worked in the foreign office in Nigeria, he contracted malaria. My dad was warned never to give blood after contracting several life threatening diseases in pre-revolutionary China. And then there's the issue of folks who can bothering or keeping up with donations.
I can't recall my mother ever donating, although her sister did, a lot, probably because she was gutted like a fish in several surgeries in the late 50s. My brother, an MD, who as a med student and intern was practically forced to donate, has let it slide. And my son, who was too anxious to get involved when he was in high school, is now too afraid to to donate now that he's a Type I diabetic. Finally, there's bums like me, who spend five decades on this planet doing gawd damn nothing without an excuse.
So, if you are able, if you are permitted, please stuff one more app into your mobile device. Pick out your favorite pony as your avatar, and join the group and donate at least once. Do it for the badges. Do it for a cartoon pony. Do it for somebody you don't even know.
As always, thanks for reading — OGM
I donate myself, though I haven't in a year or so. Thank you for the reminder of how important donations are and that giving is very important to everyone (everypony).
I just can't. :( I get light-headed from simple blood draws, it's not even anything physiological.
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I’ve seen that happen to several people, even if they’ve done it a dozen times before. On most occasions I feel a little out of it, but not after the platelets, as they send fluids back in with the red cells. But damn were my legs stiff, like flying too long.
Then I knew a guy... back when he and his buddies were in college they would donate and hit the bars, figuring the buzz came faster and cheaper.
My son’s issue, and a lot of people have this, is finding a vein. He wasn’t great to start with, and the IVs from al the hospital stays have made it worse, as much physical as psychological.
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So can I expect a pre-coffeed Applejack joining Nurse Redheart someday?
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Indeed! Though it may be later in the day after the caffeine has had a chance to work its magic.