Cornell Finch

I Had A Really Cool Title For This Post

But I entirely forgot it between getting in the car and getting to the computer. I think it was a bastardisation of a classic song.

Anyhow, today was my fourth donation of the red juice. Apparently it was a year ago that I first went. Bloody hell (no pun intended!) where has the year gone???

Sat on the bed, blood leaking from my arm, I asked the donor carer what the three sample jars were for. One sample from every donation gets sent to Birmingham where they take one cell (yes, one blood cell!) and amplify it to look for markers for diseases such as Hepatitis C. The centre in Birmingham is the only place that can do this. The other two are sent to Southampton with the blood, one to confirm the blood type and the other to look for more generic disease and general blood disorders.

The donor carer also told me some information about blood and blood types. Everyone knows that there’s groups such as O, A and B, all in positive and negative. What most people don’t know is that there are thirty sub-groups for each of those main groups. So, A negative (me for example) has thirty sub-groups that the National Blood Service (NBS) can classify to further match the donor’s blood to a patients.

The last thing that he mentioned is that different blood types come from different areas of the world. type O tends to be eastern europe, B is the mediterranean area (and Ireland for some bizarre reason) and A is usually Scandinavian – Norway, Sweden, that area. This means I have Viking blood. Perhaps that explains the grumpy attitude…

So, when did you last donate? If you say anything other than “in the last three weeks” you’re gonna get a slap. Oh, and you lurkers from work (you know who you are!) – you’ve got no excuse. The NBS blood wagon rolls in to work regularly. If you didn’t/don’t know about this and want to, give me a shout at work.

As I got in the car to come home I put the radio on. the words that emanated from my speakers were “life runs through my veins”. I remembered the title I was going to use too: I Don’t Want Your Money (Honey, I Want Your Blood) Tranvision Vamp…