I don’t remember the last time I gave blood. My donor card from Canadian Blood Services says it was 2014. I know I tried a couple of times after that but I’m always borderline on the hemoglobin scale (apparently you need 125 g/L and I’ve been refused at 120 and 123 so I guess they’re pretty strict about it; don’t worry though 120 g/L is the low end of “normal” – just not enough for them to let me donate). Anyway, the last time I tried to give I had a rather matronly reception nurse try and give me all sorts of rules to bring my iron up – as if I had never heard it all before and I was definitely made to feel as though I were wasting her time for even bothering to show up. I was off by a point or two! Sigh.
So I stopped going. And then, with all the hospitalizations going on right now I realised that was nothing but selfish of me really. So I tried to make an appointment online. It turns out the King St West clinic in Toronto just shut down because they couldn’t keep people the appropriate physical distance apart. So I made an appointment to go to the College St. location. Still close enough that I can walk and avoid public transit – I don’t need to take it so I will leave the space for the people who can.
Appropriately enough for me, my appointment was on April 1, 2020. Yep, April Fools’ Day.
I did my best – I ate broccoli, we had steak on Sunday, I had smoked oysters. And on the flip side, my period started Monday. So, what happened yesterday?
I drank lots of water all day yesterday and today and made sure to leave enough time to take a slow walk to the clinic. Everything was taped out as to where to stand and wait and there was hand sanitizer to use at multiple points.
I was about 10 minutes early so I had to wait until my time. Apparently they have a capacity of 82 donations and they almost hit 90 today! I have O+ blood – which I think is helpful for all + blood types. But whatever you have you should donate.
Anyway, my hemoglobin was a whopping 141 g/L! Woohoo!
Next time I will not plan on walking 2.5 km home again. I was wiped out and I even made sure to walk home slowly. My folks ordered pizza for dinner so I had a couple of large glasses of water and a couple slices of pizza and headed to bed!