Something like that should come with a free subscription to every streaming service out there.
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They use both his arms, but they have screens for him to watch on. He can bring DVDs, or use their streaming services. Not sure what they have, but he seems to be able to find stuff. He goes all the time, like every few weeks, since you can donate platelets a lot. During the peak of the pandemic here, it freaked me out, but now I’m pretty sure all the staff are vaccinated, and they’ve done a good job of keeping everyone safe.
I’ve donated platelets a few times. It feels miserable and takes me about four hours from the time I leave my house until I get back. I was relieved when one of the workers told me that because of my blood type, O+, my whole blood is more useful to them. So I stopped without feeling guilty.
I’ve been a past regular blood donor, but occasionally they haven’t wanted my blood due to countries visited. I went to Tanzania in 2019, so they didn’t want my blood last year. I think they probably want it again, and now that I’m fully vaxxed I’ll start donating again.
Thanks for the reminder everyone. Makingde an appointment to give blood 
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NYC has a great Portal, I can see every donation I made back to 1980.
I am around 140
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I used to donate platelets but it became too much of a time burden. I do donate whole blood (which they can separate out into red blood cells, plasma, and platelets) pretty much every 8 weeks tho. Also O+.
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OK, the app wasn’t syncing with the online portal and I didn’t check online. I donated on March 16th and was Positive for COVID antibodies. I came down with in about 1/4/2021, and cleared all symptoms by about the 15th. I am schedule for another donation on 5/11 and the Red Cross indicates they are still testing for antibodies so I’ll get another chance to see.
I have given plasma, platelets, double red and whole blood. I prefer the whole blood because I bleed pretty fast and can be done in <10 minutes from the time they poke me. If they really want, I’ll do the others but being O+, maybe they want my whole blood more, like NerdAlert indicated. I might ask what they prefer when I go in.
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By me, it seems you tell them what you want to do when you make the appointment, which makes sense as the right machines have to be available.
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Would do this, but the nurse told me to go away forever after I passed out post-blood donation.
I am also O+, and as a result they used to call me constantly to give blood. They stopped calling a while back, maybe because I haven’t given blood for a couple years.
Same. But maybe it’s because they had my work phone #, and I haven’t been there in over a year. So maybe they’re still calling me almost weekly. 
Do/did you faint other times?
I used to have horrible issues with fainting AND blood donation. (Fainting other times… not just when I donated blood.)
When I finally got the fainting under control I decided to try donating blood again and it turns out that I now can, no problem.
But they don’t want my blood after I travel to Africa or various places in the Caribbean so I often can’t. Been long enough now that I guess I could but I don’t because I’m no longer at a job where they have periodic blood drives. I should look into signing up elsewhere.
The Red Cross didn’t want my blood for years because I was over their threshold for time spent in Europe during the mad cow era (think the threshold was something like 3 months over a few year period). After a decade or so under that policy, they later shifted and limited it to the UK so I was good to donate again.
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Universal platelet and plasma donors are different from universal whole blood donors, which I find super interesting. This website summarizes where people can make the most impact by their blood type.
My employer gives me a free half day every time I give blood, up to two days a year. AND they have a donation center on site. There is no reason for me (in normal times) to not do it every eight weeks, since I don’t travel. I’ve only done it twice in the last year though, one because it’s not convenient and two because we actually had a blood surplus here for a really long time, unlike other places, and were being asked to delay scheduling so there wouldn’t be a shortage later.
I scheduled an appointment for the first full week back in the office, which is about a month away. Good reminder!
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Yeah, I meant for future appointments. When I make an appointment I make it for a particular type of deposit/donation. I have had them call and ask for certain types before but I think it was more of a campaign because they said they were in “desperate need” of this particular type of donation but the first available appointment that they could get for me was 8 weeks out. I had figured if they were so desperate that they called me up for that particular type donation (I think it was plasma) that they would get me in within a week or 2, not 2 months out.
Thank you.
I had taken off many years from donating blood (b/c of chronic pain issues)… until 2017. My husband was diagnosed w/ metastatic cancer. While he doesn’t use any blood products (yet), a lot of cancer patients do.
I’m AB+, so I donate plasma usually.
[back in my “student” days, I used to donate at the Met Life bldg at Grand Central and study for exams while donating. Back then, they used -both- arms for plasma donations. It’s been fascinating to watch how plasma donation has changed over 20+ years…]
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My husband donated platelets Sunday, and they used both arms. I suppose practices must vary from place to place.