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It seems odd to be peeved that someone's not going to stick needles in you, but I rang the blood donation people about my new drug, not wanting to waste the time going if they were going to nix it and was told that they don't want my blood because of my bipolar disorder.
Big question mark – I asked whether that meant that they generally wouldn't take blood from mad people and got a load of guffle in reply. But that's how it feels.
I'm pissed off. It may be unreasonable of me to be pissed off, but I am.
Big question mark – I asked whether that meant that they generally wouldn't take blood from mad people and got a load of guffle in reply. But that's how it feels.
I'm pissed off. It may be unreasonable of me to be pissed off, but I am.
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I live in Australia and am barred from giving blood because I lived in the UK in the 1990s - the blood bank thinks I have mad cow disease. I find this deeply annoying but yours is even worse grrr.
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That's exactly it. And I don't like it.
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I get turned down about half the time becasue I have low iron levels (not low enough to be anemic, but low enough to be anemic if they remove a pint of my blood).
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I'm not sure about the logic of that, but I had to accept it or argue with them about it with me in an open plan office.
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I also didn't get a needle stuck in me today and am miffed. Not getting a flu vaccination because I still have a slight cough from the bad cold early in October. "Come back when it's gone". That'd be, eh, April? So I'm high risk and can't get vaccination.
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If that's the case with your new medication, it's not surprising that they refused your blood. But did they really cite bipolar as the reason? The blood service is horribly discriminatory: I quit donating when they started quizzing me about my sex life. I had no problem ticking the boxes but being asked the exact same questions in a face-to-face interview where anyone nearby could hear my answers was an unncecssary humiliation. Not to mention the loaded assumptions. The rules basically boil down to "your blood is only welcome if you're straight and not black".
Clearly, there's no shortage of blood in this country.
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They didn't address the issue of the specific medication - I'd wondered about sodium valproate staying in the system which I why I rang them up to ask.
The specific reason they gave was that it was for my own protection as I was seeing my psychiatrist 'too often'. I see him approximately every two months which doesn't feel that often to me, but what do I know?
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Huh. I guess I can understand that from the CYA angle. They need to, if not assume the worst at least be pessimistic. Every two months isn't 'often' but it's often enough to be unusual, I think. I mean if your standard of 'usual' is the whole population, not those with mental issues.
Which I guess is a backwards way of saying, yeah, it's discrimination. But just possibly justified, though I can certainly understand your reaction to being rejected.
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Bane of my workplace. I already document every step I take because it's my job, but a decent CYA demands all that in triplicate and every step signed by three levels of management.
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I've had similar problems due to antibiotics and some of the asthma drugs (they wouldn't take me last year because of the theophylline). And what with the Cough O'Doom and asthma playing silly buggers with me, I've only managed to donate once or twice in the past two/three years, instead of my normal three times a year. I was hoping to make it to 100 by the age of 60; instead, it's taken me two years to go from 79 to 80. At this rate I'll be lucky to make it to 90 armfuls by 60!
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Now that I'm back in the UK, I can give again, though they would really rather I didn't, as I was in the UK from 1980 to 1995. Unfortunately, so were most of their prospective donors, so they can't do much about it in the UK. (Note for the baffled: risk of passing on mad cow disease.)
I do lie on the form, as they ask if I have ever had sex in a high risk country. The answer I give is yes, as the only person is my equally white and straight English wife, who was on honeymoon with me at the time. We assume that this isn't what they mean.
We do tell them about living in a malarial country, which sometimes inspires them to take and check an extra sample, and sometimes doesn't.
There can't be a shortage, because they don't take the trouble to find a worthwhile vein in my son, and were hesitant about me the other week because I incautiously mentioned that I had coughed that day. It wasn't my fault that a crumb got stuck in my throat. Well, possibly it was, but that doesn't mean that my whole system is riddled with infection.
Happy to rant more if anyone's happy to read more.
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I did have my Californian driving licence marked as "organ donor" while I was living there, on the assumption that even if the locals didn't want to use whatever useful bits of me survived being scraped off the highway, the NHS would undoubtedly be happy to have said bits flown home across the Atlantic.
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The BSE-related ban is politically motivated, not health-motivated. At the very beginning of the scare, it was justified, as the beginning of the statistical curve didn't give enough data as to what would happen next. But what did happen next was that the curve levelled off, showing a zero-to-mininmal risk. (This from an NZ health service statistician.)
The ban on people like me (sorry, permanent deferral) came in on a particular date and they were phoning round shortly before it, as they wanted people to give blood one more time before the ban came in. I mean, seriously, WTF?, an abbreviation I rarely use. They were worried that they would have a depleted supply, as people like me were banned...damn!...deferred. I told them that if my blood was too deangerous next week, then best not to give it this week either.
By the way, they won't take you after two pints of beer, not that this affects
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Every now and then I think I should suck it up and go donate, get over my phobia, but I haven't so far. (Though I'm probably not eligible either, having lived in Europe during the 80s and with a mother with frequent anaemia... or so I console myself.)