Happy to be of help again....

One more good reason for having born in this world...they say donating blood is like donating life. While I think this is a bit too exaggerated, but for the lives of those needy patients and their relatives, it is such an important thing. I realised this today when I went to donate blood (luckily I had deferred it for whatever reasons by few days...wanted to celebrate independence day by donating blood, but I think I was destined to be of help to this needy woman who needed platelets as she was suffering from dengue fever.
When I was about to shut my shop @ work and leave for the day at 8, I get this call from the husband of the patient requesting for blood. Just rushed to the hospital, donated blood...and spent few minutes with the patient's husband. I feel its very important to support such kind of people during this time - just by staying with them for few minutes and speaking to them - requesting them to take care of their relatives and themselves. Its very important to make them realise that they need to be strong - mentally during this time.
Luckily, I also met the patient and wished speedy recovery. I pray to GOD to help them to recover quickly.
One of my friends later told me that India will be celebrating 'Joy of Giving Week' from Sept 27 to Oct 3 of this year (more information can be had at http://joyofgivingweek.org/index.html). What a coincidence!

Another year.....

Its 15th morning again...same Blood Bank at Nimhans. While donating blood, I saw this group of 4 guys who had come from a remote town of Karnataka to donate blood to one of their relatives. One of them (maybe around 30 yrs) had a reasonably high BP, but he was not sure what it meant to him. The nurse was trying to explain him what it was and what he should be doing in future. He was just talking till the nurse asked him to shut his mouth! It was funny!

This time, I got to know that they have a demand of almost 300-400 units of blood daily and that they will charge Rs.300/- (for testing and storing?) for every unit that they supply. They also said that immediately after drawing blood, they separate out plasma, platelets and red-cells as each of these have different shelf-life...plasma (5 days), platelets (1 year) and red cells (35 days).