Michael Rutschky
Published: October 25, 2006
I hope you bleed. No offense or anything. One pint of blood can be used to save up to three lives. The platelets and plasma can be separated from it and put to use, or the whole of your blood can be used.
The nearest blood clinic to the main campus is the Northwest Florida Blood Center, which is a short drive up Ninth Avenue.
This Friday, Oct. 27, Northwest Florida Blood Center is having a blood drive at WEAR from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. I urge anyone who can go to do so and bleed a little for the greater good.
Once there, all you need to do is sign in, answer a short questionnaire (in which you will answer whether you’ve donated before or not), and move on to the donation process.
The questionnaire is used to filter out people who more than likely have some sort of ailment that could be transmitted through their blood into the person that’s receiving it.
I started donating blood at the urging of my girlfriend, who isn’t allowed to do so herself. She lived in England when she was younger during the same time as a Mad Cow Disease epidemic. There’s a very remote chance that she could be harboring Mad Cow, and so she has never been allowed to give blood – at least not until they have a way to test for it.
So she convinced me to do it for her. When I really thought about it, I never had a good enough reason not to do it before. I’m always for helping a noble cause and I’ve never had a bad experience with needles.
All I could figure was that I was just too lazy to do anything before. I knew the opportunity existed; I just took it for granted. Most people do.
In fact, out of the millions of people who are eligible to donate, only about 5 percent actually do.
Then I remembered my grandfather, who had been in and out of the hospital around that time, and had recently received a very large blood transfusion during one of his operations. That blood came from people who, for one reason or another, didn’t want to be lazy anymore.
After considering all this, I avoided any further hesitation, and went in to donate.
People forget that heroes and “good Samaritans” aren’t exceptions to the everyday man. Everyday men and women are all heroes. Donating blood is a very simple way to realize this. It sounds very clich‚, but it’s the truth.
Donating is fast and relatively painless, and the clinic provides you with all the drinks and snacks you like.
Once the blood starts its detour through the tubes you begin to realize how incredibly valuable it really is, even if it’s something that we healthy people can produce in a nearly endless quantity.
Think about it, by giving away a bit of something that your body has more than enough of, you’re giving three people another chance at life.