Thursday, April 17, 2008
Princeton Hospital needs blood
Do you live in the Princeton, New Jersey area? If so, please consider going by Princeton hospital and donating blood. Our HR department got a call requesting help. Apparently there is a particular need for B+ blood (about 8.5% of you), so if that is your type please make a special effort to donate tomorrow. The hours are 7:30 a.m. - 3 p.m., and the details are here, or call 609-497-4366 for more information.
I will be there tomorrow morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and would be delighted to see you there, too!
UPDATE: I went by to donate blood this morning, and the hospital had a full supply with no capacity for taking any more in (Princeton hospital is not licensed to sell it to other blood banks). Apparently the email circulated by our HR department last night had been sent out a week ago. They did ask that I come back in a couple of weeks when they expected to be back down to their usual 50% supply.
In any case, thank you all for your response, and think about dropping by in early May.
11 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Apr 17, 09:40:00 PM:
We B pos people are popular with the hospitals. I'll be there sometime after a few business items are covered.
Andrew
By 
TigerHawk, at
Thu Apr 17, 09:51:00 PM:
Indeed we are! But we have some immunity to plague, which would be useful if we lived in the 14th century.
Tiger "B+" Hawk
By Simon Kenton, at
Thu Apr 17, 10:51:00 PM:
It would be useful now, if you lived in Boulder, CO, where we value our prairie dogs above our parks and our kids. Or in Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, or parts of Montana.
By , at
Thu Apr 17, 11:19:00 PM:
Does it have to be blue for Princeton use?
By Escort81, at
Fri Apr 18, 12:29:00 AM:
It's a great program at the Princeton Hospital. I started giving there 30 years ago as an undergrad and kept up with the Red Cross in various locations as I moved around, and I think I'm up over 100 units. I've mostly been doing apheresis donation (platelets) over the last decade. Aside from the feeling that you might actually be doing something directly constructive for a change, the free cookies are the best part.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Apr 18, 03:47:00 AM:
Escort81 -
Well, you are a better man than me. I give when the team comes to our company during the employee blood donation drive if I am in town when it happens. I think that comes to roughly every other year.
However, I do claim credit for starting the employee blood donation drive at our company, which has probably resulted in thousands of units over the years. So that's something!
By , at
Fri Apr 18, 09:16:00 AM:
I am also B+ and used to get frequent calls from the ARC Blood Lady when I lived in Princeton (1974-1979) and Cranbury (1979-1998).
Obligatory obscure Princeton reference. The Blood Lady was the daughter of the Major who was the long time permanent Grand Marshall of the P'rade who always carried two watches so the P'rade would get off at 2:00pm sharp. She worked with my mother-in-law at the ARC on Harrison street and that's how I got into P'rade Marshalling. And, yes, I do have my hat to this day.
JLW III '67
By , at
Fri Apr 18, 10:15:00 AM:
Sadly, Red Cross rules don't allow me to contribute. Gay, but have always been HIV negative and will always be HIV negative. It seems a waste, but those are the rules, and I don't think it wise to lie to get around them.
By , at
Fri Apr 18, 10:27:00 AM:
That rule seems archaically counterproductive to me, on it's face. Is the issue an inability to accurately test for HIV?
By Escort81, at
Fri Apr 18, 12:53:00 PM:
No, TH, you are the better man, if for no other reason than you run this blog. Sharing my bodily fluids is something I enjoy doing! Certainly there wasn't enough of that at PU in the late 70s.
And I was going to say that donating to the ARC is something nearly devoid of politics and as American as apple pie. I sympathize with Anon 10:15, and I think the screening carries with it the bad experiences of two decades ago, when HIV infected blood got through the ARC system. I have a friend (who was a hemophiliac) who eventually died as a result of complications from bad blood. My understanding is that the ARC still believes that gay men are still in a high risk group -- that HIV may not be detectable for a certain period of time following unprotected sex, or that certain offshore-produced condoms may not in fact protect against forms of HIV. They look at it through the lens of clinical probablility -- even an improbable event will eventually happen with enough independent trials.
The battery of questions I answer as an apheresis donor (besides the gay question you point out) include whether I've traveled to Africa, how much cumulative time I've spent outside the U.S. since 1980, and whether I've ever exchanged money for sex (which presumably would disqualify my classmate Eliot Spitzer) -- to which I respond, "does buying dinner count?"
By , at
Fri Apr 18, 02:26:00 PM:
Escort ... I haven't given in awhile. My thyroid condition and exercise have resulted in a really slow heart rate. I used to call and make sure I'd be cool to donate, and the dicked me around one too many times and didn't take the blood. So I just stopped wasting my time.
FWIW ... my response on the gay, drugs, whore, etc. questions was always "you make me feel like I haven't lived" ...
