A blood donation reward
Yesterday I had a nice surprise through the door from the NHS. Blood donation is a subject that can make many people wince a little. Giving money can be hard enough for some people depending on their circumstances, but blood donation is another matter again. I think we all have an idea that blood donation will make us feel ill or faint or that it will hurt. Most of us don’t like hospitals so the thought of voluntarily entering such a medical environment to give blood is too much for many. I am no different, for a long time I gave myself all sorts of excuses as to why to avoid blood donation. I didn’t have time, the location was inconvenient to get to that day, I had other things I needed to get done, or I honestly just didn’t like the idea.
The first time I gave blood I was very nervous; silly really, it is done every day and donors after giving blood get on with their daily lives again. My late mother had suffered all her life with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of Arthritis. Due to complications with her condition, she had to receive blood many times. It wasn’t an easy time. I think it was partly her regular visits to hospital that built a feeling of guilt in me that she was receiving extra life from the NHS and I wasn’t helping to put life back into the system for people like my mother. It made me feel selfish that I was choosing not to do something so simple that would help others immeasurably, just because it made me feel a little “icky.”
That’s not to say that I love giving blood, blood donation involves a bit of waiting around, which prolongs that contact with a medical environment and all the associations with it. But honestly, that is the worst bit, the thinking about it, the actual act of doing it is easy, it’s just the association that I think most people (certainly me) dislike. After seeing people take a book to read, I now just watch some YouTube videos on my phone as it keeps my mind on things I want to be thinking about, it makes blood donation much easier. And if you are wondering if the needle hurts, it feels no worse that someone giving you a mild pinch or pulling a hair out, sometimes I barely notice it.
When the certificate and that simple pin badge arrived, as small a gift it may be, it made me feel very proud, because it signified that I had helped others. Maybe the fact that I didn’t know who I was helping in some ways made it more special, because I was doing it to help someone, not a person I had selected for special reasons who would later thank me.
So if you are considering blood donation, there is no need to put it off any longer. You may have no money, but you can give someone something that money can never buy them; LIFE. That person receiving new life will very likely be you one day, and it will be from someone you don’t know, who chose to give blood.
