The Channels

Issue date: 3/19/08 Section: Opinion

Helen Tracey

"Are you ready," the man asked as he tied my arm off and tapped it a few times.

"I've done this before," I replied.

Even though I had done it before, I still had butterflies in my stomach. The man massaged my arm with some rubbing alcohol, revealing a bulging vein.

"You can look away if you want," he said.

I don't. For some reason, I feel a satisfaction in watching a needle the size of a fork prong delve into my arm. A sense of euphoria runs through me as if I were skydiving.

I watch as my life drains from me and down a tube into a plastic bag with a number on it that is being gently rocked by an automated machine. The man in his black thick-framed glasses with a congenial smile is visiting from Ventura; he is still adjusting to the slower pace of the United Blood Services building in downtown Santa Barbara.

I am a blood donor.

Every eight weeks a person can donate their blood to the Red Cross or United Blood Services. Each time a donation occurs, a pint is taken from the donor. The entire blood donating process takes less than an hour including the interview. The actual donation only takes about 10 minutes.

For the last two years, I have been religiously donating blood. In all, I have donated six and a half pints of blood to someone in need. There are 12 pints of blood in the average human body, meaning I have donated half of my blood for those lying on a gurney bleeding of gunshot wounds or other injuries.

People who can benefit from blood donations are hemophiliacs, those with heart disease, severe anemia, malaria, tuberculosis, or those who have lost large amounts of blood in an accident. Each donation goes to more than one recipient, so a donor is saving more than one life when they take less than an hour out of their time to contribute.

Recently, my mother had a cyst removed from her uterus that was malignant for cancer. My grandmother had it befor her and died from it a year after I was born, and my mother also could have been claimed by this condition. Luckily the tumor was malignant because it was endometriosis, a condition of small cists that grow onto the uterine lining.

My mother had to undergo surgery for a full hysterectomy, a surgery that required a blood transfusion. Instead of using a stranger's blood, my mother wanted to use mine since we shared the same type.

Unfortunately, the hospital wanted to charge $50 to use the blood I would donate to substitute for the blood she would have used normally. We decided not to use my blood.

I wasn't able to give blood to my mother, but at least I know that my blood will go to people in need.


Giving blood is my community service. What's yours?

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