If You Have Never Donated Blood, What’s Your Reason?

[MarmaladeSandwich7]

I went to donate back in the 90s & wasn’t allowed to as I hadn’t long been back from South Africa. Somehow I’ve just never got around to it since but would very much like to. DF donated for years. I have a tendency to be anaemic & so worry that I should maybe hang onto my blood?! My iron levels are fine atm.

I have tried on many occasions the first time I found out I was pregnant 2 weeks after donating and had to have them recall my donation.
Been anaemic twice so refused and then on my final effort I was ready to go in the chair and the nurse dropped the needle which pricked my arm ever so slightly and I wasn’t able to donate.
So, I gave up because it’s actually really difficult to get an appointment and it clearly isn’t meant to be!

I’ve donated about 40 times but DH has never been. His reason (apart from just not wanting to!) is that he isn’t sure if he received a blood transfusion when he had his appendix out in his early 20s.

My dad has never donated as he once had jaundice as a young man.

I think I am going to have to give up as last time I went I fainted! Usually I am fine but occasionally my haemoglobin has been too low or they couldn’t get the blood out. My weight fluctuates a bit and I only just weigh enough to donate.

I somehow make antibodies that they don't want in blood, despite having never had a transfusion or miscarriage. It's a mystery to me how I have them.

Don't meet the weight requirements. I wish they would let people do smaller bags as it's a lot to take from a woman compared to a man.

Where I live they only do appointments during work time.

When I worked in a school I was able to do it during the holidays but now my AL rarely coincides with the appointments.

I do but it is a slog with the appointment system. On the one hand when you do get an appointment that isn't cancelled at the last minute or you have to cancel because you've got a cold or something, you are nearly always in and out quickly now (less than an hour). In the old days of just turning up it could be hours of queueing if like everyone else you had to go after work (my employer back then wouldn't let you have time off for it).

But trying to get an appointment is hard, I live in a market town that only has sessions a couple of times a year, same for the town where I work, there are sessions in some of the other nearby towns but by the time you drive there and back it's two hours out of the working day rather than one for the in town sessions. But you can often get last minute cancellations if that works for you. They cancelled on me in December, the first appointment I could re-book was mid Feb but I looked just now and can get one on Friday so I'm going to do that. It is at least easy to use the app to book them, it's just availability and them cancelling at short notice that are problems.

At my local blood bank you are asked your gender assigned at birth. I wasn’t assigned any gender at birth so I can’t donate.

I cross it out and put sex

I be received transfusions. Not allowed to. Seeing bc as it saved my life I very willingly would if I could.

What a muppet.

They won’t let you. They will then ask the question verbally so they can fix it on your form.

That has never happened to me

I'm GC and still think this is an utterly ridiculous excuse not to donate blood.

Me too. Some things are far more important.

Never easy to donate when I was younger and now medically can't.
The blood bank used to come to my dad's work, so donations were really easy! Maybe they should try this again......

What would you do if you or your family needed a blood transfusion ?

Now it’s because of a previous transfusion but when I tried in the past I was told I didn’t have a suitable vein which is strange because I’ve managed to have blood tests done.
I wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t done it though and I’m extremely thankful.

No need to be rude. It’s the slow drip, drip acceptance of this idealogy and the capture of our health organisations that has got us to a place where they are sterilising young children and carrying out Frankenstein type surgeries. I won’t support any captured organisation and now they know why. I am not the only one.

🙄

I'm anaemic and on medication so don't give blood anymore. When my darling dad was very ill in hospital (Rosemere Ward, Royal Preston) a doctor asked a nurse to give him a blood transfusion. We waited ages for her to set it up and it was only when I complained that she bothered to do it. As she very reluctantly set it up she even told me the cost of the bag of blood and looked at my dad and tutted. She gave me the impression it was wasted on my dad. It was only after he'd passed away that I found a certificate amongst his things that he'd been awarded when he was younger, for the many, many times he'd given blood. How I wish I'd known about it when that horrible nurse was insinuating the bag of blood was wasted on my amazing dad.

Cutting off other people's noses, including potentially your own, to spite the face of an organisation that doesn't even know - much less care - why you don't donate

I’ve got dodgy blood so never tried
Two ongoing deficiencies

This is the main reason for me

My previous employer used to have the ‘blood bus’ come onto site twice per year and the uptake was really good.
I genuinely have not seen anything about blood donation, other than this thread, for about 4 years so I just haven’t thought about it tbh. Have they had their advertising budgets cut?