give blood again

I won’t be able to do this until January, because I’m not allowed to donate for 6 months after visiting a country where I could have picked up malaria.

Blood last january and plasma two weeks ago, when they called me because they had a great demand, with the holidays and all (sadly)...

run a blood drive!

i’ve run a couple and they’ve potentially saved over 200 lives. nothing’s more fun than not only giving YOUR blood, but making OTHER people do it as well XD

it’s a blast and the people from the blood bank in my area are AWESOME

Done!

I need to make sure I eat enough red meat to get my iron levels up and then I’ll go.

It took about 18 months .. but I finally went yesterday and donated blood again. I have now formed a group with some people I work with so we have planned our next trip to the blood bank in 3 months time.

This Saturday I plan to go for it, it’s now officially a plan (unless it’s not open Saturday, in which case Monday). In fact, I’m going to ask someone to make a date to come with me so that I definitely do it. I’ll make sure that this week I get a lot of iron in my system and make sure I have lots of rest. Last time I went I was stressed about exams and had little sleep and too much coffee, needless to say I didn’t have enough iron, it was the worst feeling and totally scared me away from my regular visits. This Saturday, I’m going to have one less thing on my list. :)

The Red Cross really screwed me around last time I tried to donate. Cancelled the drive I was going to directly after work. Sent out a notification email the same day – I can’t check that at work! What a waste of my time.
Anyone know if there’s an organization in Omaha similar to the Siouxland Blood Bank? They treated me very nicely and I want to give blood, but I’m done with the Red Cross, at least for right now.

...and yet have a hard time doing. I almost always flunk the freakin’ hematocrit. I’ve tried everything I can think of to boost my iron count, from making sure not to try donating at a certain time of month (ahem) to eating iron-rich foods paired with vitamin C foods before I plan to give.

But I’ve been on prenatal vitamins for a while, preparing to have a baby, so I should’ve been in top form to donate when the last blood drive rolled around a month ago. (The kicker? The blood drive was in the lobby of the building where I work, just steps outside my department’s office. Like, no effort at all to show up!) But since I was trying to get pregnant, and wasn’t 100% sure that I wasn’t pregnant, I decided to sit it out. (I checked the Red Cross site first and found that pregnant women are prohibited from donating until six weeks after delivery.) Wouldn’t you know? The next day, I got confirmation that I was not, in fact, pregnant.

blood donor. I gave at the bloodmobile in front of Casa Cayo Heuso, the southernmost house in the U.S. That would make me a southernmost blood donor. Cayo Heuso means “Isle of Bones” and is the spanish term that Key West is derived from. Thus Key West is the “Isle of Bones”.
Looks like I am a fit fiddle.

I was asked if my blood pressure and pulse were usually low, to which I answered: I've run a few marathons and ride my bike 10-15 miles a day.  They understood :-)