by Jimmy Nightingale

Created on: October 19, 2009   Last Updated: November 09, 2009

Mark sat in the waiting area of his local Blood Bank. As a first time donor and someone with a conscientious loathing of anything to do with needles, he shuffled the paperwork in the folder on his knees. So many questions. And some rather personal ones. Where he'd travelled, sexual history, questions about tattoos and piercings, previous illnesses and medications; they wanted to know everything.

A nurse walked up to him, smiled and gestured for him to follow her to a cubicle. After checking his weight and blood pressure, she leafed through the answers on his questionnaire and queried the few exceptions (his one and only tattoo was three years ago; he had taken some acetaminophen last week for a headache - no dramas with either). She then did a finger prick test to check for hemoglobin, extracting a bead of blood on to a slide.

"15", she said, interpreting his expression as an inquiry on the hemoglobin count.

"Is that good or bad?"

The nurse, Amy, according to her name tag, smiled and explained what the result meant. When he quizzed her on why they did the test, Amy mentioned that they tested for anaemia (too few red blood cells) or polycythemia (too many), both of which could point to underlying medical conditions. Things like severe lung disease, bone marrow failure, iron deficiency, cirrhosis, kidney disease, cancers affecting bone marrow - or a range of chronic diseases. And she assured Mark that 15 was almost right in the middle of the normal range.

"Well, that's a relief", Mark said. "After the finger prick test, I was starting to question what I was doing here".

Amy explained that only about 3 in 100 American adults donated blood on a regular basis, but sooner or later, around ten times that number (or about 1 in 3) would need it.

"So it's a good thing I'm doing then?" he asked.

"Absolutely. But it's not all one sided. You get something out of this too, you know"

Mark had signed up to avoid looking churlish. Or squeamish. He'd just started a new contract with an employer who encouraged staff to donate blood, giving them time off on full pay and organizing transport to and from the Blood Bank. Nearly all his co-workers participated.

Mark learned that they tested his blood for ABO type (blood group), Rh groups and red cell antibodies. They also tested his donation for five transfusion transmissible infectious diseases - HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV) and syphilis. In a way, it was like a free health screen.

If

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