A Needed Gift That’s From the Heart
Have I been tattooed in the last 12 months? Spent 72 hours in jail? Received a transfusion in the Congo?
It’s been a pretty uneventful year, I explained. Just work and an occasional movie.
The woman at United Blood Services persisted.
Gone in for any body-piercing lately? Taken any hikes through Mexico’s malaria belt? Come down with diseases you can’t pronounce?
Such questions are asked each and every time a donor gives blood, and anyone generous enough to give frequently can recite them from memory.
I can’t, because I’m not that generous. Before this week, the last time I donated blood was five years ago.
I was stuck for a column then too.
Then, as now, the call went out for donors. Every winter, some of the regulars come down with the flu and can’t give. Every summer, they take themselves and their bodily fluids on vacation.
That leaves only us well-intentioned, morally dormant slackers to heed the blood banks’ warning that the cupboard is nearly bare, that a day will come when surgeries must be postponed and patients go without critical procedures.
Thank God for the regulars! Over the years, some of the old hands in Ventura County have contributed as much as 20 gallons, according to United Blood Services officials. That’s enough to fill a child’s wading pool--or, far better, to help 25 patients through the average heart surgery.
The surprising thing is that giving a pint of your best is a painless--in fact, an oddly pleasant--experience.
After I answered a round of questions designed to root out exposure to hepatitis, AIDS and other diseases, a nurse named Debbie Hayes led me to a recliner. She didn’t say much but she was reassuring, as only a nurse who regularly deals with middle-aged men on the verge of fainting can be.
“You might feel a little pinch,” she said.
I’ve been around long enough to brace myself when a medical professional wielding a needle or other invasive instrument says I might feel “a little pinch” or “some mild discomfort.” But this really was a little pinch; in 10 minutes, one of my dozen or so pints filled a plastic bag and would be bound for a life-saving mission at a local hospital.
I hauled the other 11, less-saintly pints to a table dominated by a basket of cellophane-wrapped oatmeal-cookie sandwiches filled with a sickeningly sweet marshmallow spread. They were delicious.
When my friend Tim was involved in a desperately bad marriage, he gave blood as often as he could. The nurses were nice to him, he told me, and gave him orange juice and cookies after they’d toted his blood away. They made him feel like a good little fellow. At the time, it didn’t get any better than that.
Giving blood is falling out of favor. Donations are decreasing by 1% a year, and demand is increasing at the same rate, according to government statistics. A federal committee on the nation’s blood supply has forecast a permanent shortage in a few years.
Young people aren’t rushing in with arms outstretched, said Patty Hunt of United Blood Services in Ventura County.
“We’re losing a lot of younger people to tattoos,” she said. “That disqualifies them for a year.” Tattoo needles may spread infection, and blood banks aren’t taking any chances.
Travel also takes a toll on the blood business, she said. A cruise ship might put in at a conventional tourist spot like Mazatlan, but venturesome travelers can easily wander into malaria country, Hunt said.
That leaves more giving opportunities for the rest of us.
Try it. It’s relaxing. The only effort you need exert is to lie still and keep your heart pumping. For that, you get the satisfaction of committing a clearly virtuous act without having to write a check. And there’s no way your donation will be squandered on “administrative expenses”; blood is blood, and no alchemy can convert it into a Cadillac for some charity honcho.
Plus, a nurse will be nice to you. You’ll get orange juice and cookies--and maybe a column out of the deal.
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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.
