I’m donating blood today. It’ll be my 20th donation. Probably around 4 were whole blood, another 6 were plasma, the remaining 10 being apheresis aka platelet donations. I’m O- so my blood is quite useful, it can be given to anyone. Mostly it goes to newborns.
That’s always been a pretty cool thing for me, but when my own little one was born it made things quite a bit more important. Tobias was born premature due to a rare condition my wife had. He narrowly avoided the neo-natal intensive care unit (a few days earlier or a few tens of grams less and he would have gotten a sweet incubator)
We got results back from his umbilical cord and placenta analysis - turns out there was a blood clot in the cord. I imagine if the docs new that, he would have been whipped out via c-section the second we presented to the hospital. He should have been stillborn, all things considered, Laura could have died if a part of the clot broke off and got into her system. Fucking unreal. We’re very lucky. Miraculously so. The odds were super against us.
Which is why now, more then ever, I’m motivated to ignore a lot of baggage and more than a little bit of fear, in order to crack on and get stuck with big needles. Because people need blood, my wife and child nearly did, others sure as hell do. During her hospital stay she wasn’t the sickest person on the ward, nor was Toby.
Shit’s important yo. Go donate. Each donation could save the lives of 3 people. What’s a bit of fear and discomfort compared with the lives of 3 people?