Bleeding For a good Reason

I DONATED BLOOD 150 times or so before I ever donated platelets or plasma, and was glad to, because it took only a short time, was emotionally rewarding, could be done only every two months, and I had been started by a gorgeous blonde, whose memory every donation evinced. I had, at the age of twenty, never heard of platelet or plasma donation. Good, standard O Pos, always in demand, common, ever popular. Then the lab techs discovered I had viral free blood, and not only that, but platelets rich in antigens. I was condemned to a life of far more frequent bleedings, for who can say no to an infant on a respirator? I enjoyed the numbers. maybe it has something to do with being a baseball fan. After forty years, 256 donations,, 185 whole blood, the rest platelets and your occasional plasma. Long ago the number three hundred unattainable, but no longer does. don't let these people with inflated numbers fool you; its mostly platelets, which can be given every two weeks. For my money, whole blood is the real deal, and anyone with, say, four or five hundred to credit is obviously all about plasma. donating, it is rumored, reduces your risk of a cardio vascular disaster by as much as thirty percent. A decent diet, weight control, and decades of hard exercise ought to do the trick. My grandfather died of strokes at sixty eight, in the primitive days before proper blood pressure medicine, when it was assumed that a person's blood pressure ought to be one hundred plus your age on top, and whatever on bottom. Can you imagine your doctor today being happy to tell you that your B.P. is a normal one sixty over ninety? Now, one size fits all, its got to be one twenty over eighty for us all, no matter what it takes, no matter how much or how many various pills. In he end, don't they all, basically, just rid your body of water, and dehydrate your body into compliance? I somehow have a sneaking suspicion that we are primitive now, only a bit less so. surely our descendants will marvel that we ever believed in a standard blood pressure reading for all registered voters, or that there was every anything magical about a cholestoral reading below two hundred. George Washington's self imposed death by blood loss comes to mind. He is thought to have lost five pints in a single evening, after returning home from brisk ride around the property in cold wet weather, and refusing to change clothing before dinner for fear of offending guests by being tardy and occupied upstairs getting dry. He had three attending "physicians", two of whom subscribed to the voodoo medicine of bad blood letting, the third of whom was young lacking status, and ignored. He tried to warn them. the father of our country ordered his own bleeding not once, but twice. The father of our country, is point of fact, committed suicide, quite by accident. Think of the waste. think how well he would have fit in today, and how he would have loved knowing that his self imposed sacrifice could have gone to a higher, far less needlessly destructive cause. Oh lord, before i die, let me hit the five hundred mark............THANK YOU for reading this website. please share it with a friend, so we can expand access the original writing!