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There won’t be blood

I have been rejected. I am unclean, impure, unworthy. I have the mark of the plague on my door. Why - because apparently my blue British blood is not good enough for Canadians. As a regular donor back in the UK I decided it was time to restart my little token of benevolence this side of the Atlantic. However on contacting the Canadian Blood Service I was politely informed it’s a no-go - I am British therefore they don’t want my donation.

Apparently it’s because of Mad Cow Disease - they can’t rule out that bovine-based disease is swimming about in my bloodstream. I had heard a rumor that this might be the case but was told it only applied in Quebec, which was fine by me as I don’t want to donate to the French anyway - in fact I assumed there was a box you could tick to request this - but as it turns out it’s a country-wide blood-based apartheid.

To be fair I can’t really blame them - it is based on medical science rather than simple anti-British prejudice. I mean at least it’s preventing further contamination and because we’ve all got bad dentistry for example. I guess am just disappointed that I’ve been robbed of one of the few opportunities I have of making a magnanimous gesture.

See I think that giving blood is something that, if you can do it, you should. If you’re reasonably healthy, right age, height and weight and don’t mind needles then you have no reason not to - it’s just good karma. And if you are a young, single guy it’s actually quite a good place to meet women, as in my experience female donators outnumber their male counterparts and young male volunteers are a rarity - the opposite of which I believe to be true at the sperm bank.

In fact back in the UK I had moved beyond simple blood donation to the next level - platelet donation. This is like the VIP lounge - a much tougher selection criteria is applied (I just squeaked through on the weight allowance, am sure if I didn’t have my iPOD in my pocket the scale would not have tipped in my favor), you can donate much more regularly, and you never have to wait for an appointment.

That’s the upside - OK that and the fact your platelets are being used potentially to save lives - but signing up wasn’t perhaps the easy ride I thought it might be. I thought it would be a chance to wing an hour of work - lie in a chair, watch Countdown while feeling good about yourself. This is not the case.

To donate platelets you get hooked up to what looks like a reassuringly expensive looking machine - which draws blood from your arm, spins it about along with some other complicated medical procedures, removing your platelets before returning the blood to your arm. Or rather I am told this what happens - I could be providing energy for a race of supreme alien beings like in The Matrix, but still at least they give me a magazine to read.

The result should be a little bag of straw coloured material which is then taken away to do good somewhere. However if you’ve over indulged on crap food, drink and drugs during the days leading up to your donation - this bag will turn more like a shit brown colour and is basically useless. To add to this humiliation, because of where the bag is positioned you can’t see it but everyone else can - a bit like having a colonoscopy and having the tube pointed out of a window.

The donation also requires you to maintain a constant flow while the blood is taken from you, and then to relax when it’s returned - at intervals of roughly 30 seconds. If you fail to do either of these things an alarm goes off on the machine. If, like me, you have low blood pressure and pathetically skinny arms which make the blood-pressure increasing cuff thing fall off all the time - the alarm goes off a lot. Usually when the nurse is about to start a conversation, get a drink or basically attend to someone else, causing her to scuttle back to the machine while doing her best to disguise her annoyance. As a result on my donations I would usually end up looking at the little computer readout while pumping away furiously (oo-er) to stop the little gauge falling into the red zone thereby cueing up more beeping and nurse irritation. It sort of like playing a very basic interactive computer game, for an hour, with a needle stuck in your arm - Super Mario Crack addict, something like that.

So it’s hardly relaxing and by the end I would be glad to get back to work - but please don’t let that put you off. You might not get to watch daytime TV but the feeling of well-being is worth it in the end, even your immune system is helping the French :-)