Donating Blood

Donating Blood 

Monday, July 25, 2011 

Today my regularly scheduled blood donation rolled around. I used to do this on Saturdays, but the Red Cross center where I donate kept changing its weekend schedule, and I'd run into it being closed for major holidays. So a couple years ago I switched to Monday afternoons, because it's open every Monday and I can schedule at real 8 week intervals instead of having to hit the shifting 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 4th Saturday. 

If I donate 6 times in a year, the Red Cross sends me a cute little pin proclaiming the fact. This is my record of how long I've been doing this. I counted six such pins just now, for 2004 through 2009 excluding 2006. I think I got sick around one donation in 2006, and that resulted in not giving 6 times. Oh, and 2010? The calendar fell just right and I have a nice pin with a 7 on it for 2010. It will be back to 6 in 2011.

The little pins are one of the things the Red Cross does to try to motivate repeat donors. Some of the other things I have from Red Cross motivation efforts include a small blanket, and very nice baseball cap, a red plush "life saving bloodhound" plush toy, and a heart shaped stress ball. Of course, none of this stuff is why I give blood. I give blood because I can, many people cannot, it's a socially responsible thing to do, and there is always need. Today there was a sign up for a blood shortage, with reminders of recent news on local tragedies where much blood was required. 

There's also a promotion, give blood in the month of July and get a coupon for 1.5 quart container of Friendly's ice cream. 

Today was my first blood donation since starting with SparkPeople. The preliminaries went a lot like other blood donations, very routine. Then there was this coupon. And the post-donation canteen. In the past, I would have had juice and cookies. Today, I took the bottled water and read the nutrition information on the offered snacks. It wasn't a very hard decision to stick with the raisins, easily the healthiest thing offered. 

Standard advice includes drinking an extra 4 glasses of water after blood donation. I've never paid much attention to that or tracked how much I drank. But now I have the Spark. No problem, just treat my minimum water for today as 12 glasses instead of 8. 

 I'm new to the SparkPeople system, but I've been donating blood for quite a while. I know how my body reacts to a blood donation. It was less trouble than I expected to get in 30 fitness minutes and 10K steps on a blood donation day. In fact, I may break 14K steps before I go to bed. It was surprisingly easy to stay on track for both food and exercise while working around the blood donation. The only thing I didn't get in today was strength exercises. 

Lesson of the day: I can keep up the plan and keep streaks alive even on blood donation days. Oh, yeah, that ice cream coupon? I think I'll give it to my daughter. I don't need to eat 1.5 quarts of ice cream.