Blood Donation

 My journey to supporting blood donation and other products has been long and slow. I am British, although have now spent half my life in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, back in 1999 the blood service decided that the risk of mad cow disease from anyone who, at one time or another, had lived in Great Britain for longer than 6 months during 1980-1996 could no longer donate due to the threat of contaminating the blood product and their lack of being able to test for it and ensure the products were not contaminated (which takes out more people than you realise and definitely takes me out, as I was born there and lived there in some capacity util Feb 1998) which lead to me be unable to donate for the last 24 years!

Before I moved to NZ, I had donated about 10 units of blood, at some stage for a small while, they decided I needed it more than they did! So, whilst I was a regular donator, there was the odd year where I didn't donate. With red blood cells, you can donate once every 3-4 months, so not many times in the year.

Once the ban was lifted this year, I ventured back and gave some blood. I also noticed that they did plasma donations and after some enquiries I decided to give it a go. You can donate plasma every 2-3 weeks, yes, weeks. This is due to them filtering your blood to remove the plasma and returning the red blood cells back to your body, thereby not depleting your body of them and allowing you to not have to make new red cells (the part that takes the time and the reason you can only donate blood so infrequent)

So, here I am, allowed to donate again and happy to donate plasma every 3 weeks or so. I could do it every 2 weeks but felt that was just not suitable, so 3 weeks minimum between donations is my setting and it is achievable and works for me. I think you should do what works for you and not always what they would say, this then makes it work for your life, your body and allow you to sustain it, which I feel is better than not at all.