Today was a blood donation day.
This was my 29th blood donation since starting regular donations again in July 2013 at the Stanford Blood Center. 29 pints is 3.625 gallons of blood. That is a lot of blood! A friend of mine posted about doing a double red blood cell donation recently and I am wondering if I should switch to that. I am somewhat intimidated by the longer (more painful?) process, but the person doing my health check-in today told me that each time a person receives a transfusion, there is a chance that their body will react badly and that it is a benefit to them to get two sets of packed cells from one person. I also learned that they never use my plasma because I have been pregnant in the past, so donating just the packed cells sort of makes sense.
Food for thought! But today, I gave one pint of blood and got one chocolate cookie out of the deal.
the sheep free knitter 