Almost 21 years ago, my father was diagnosed with leukaemia and was initially given 10 years to live. When he broke the news to me, I was beyond words.
A week later, he was told that he had gone straight to the acute stage, shortening his life expectancy to only 3 months. I cannot describe the despair I felt - I had always been close to my parents and certainly expected that they would both be around for a long time.
My father had been a blood donor for his adult life, and in those last 3 months, he received weekly transfusions. This meant he could continue life almost normally, and that allowed me to have a lot of very good time with him, and I have a lot of happy memories of that time.
When he died, I swore I'd give all the blood back that he'd donated for others, but used himself, and today I reached my 50 award. The thing is, of all the achievements of my life, this is the one of which I'm the most proud, and I think my father would have felt the same, and yet it is the easiest to achieve - I simply turn up at a date and place convenient to me, and then a group of friendly NHS nurses take over and do all the hard work, and at the end, reward me with a drink, biscuits, crisps and other nibbles. It's certainly less of a chore than going to the dentist.
So finally, my appeal - please, please go and give blood. The service is crying out for new donors and you never know when someone you love might need it - I certainly didn't expect that anyone I knew would, but without donors, I wouldn't have had those precious 3 months with my father.
One final and related request, on something I heard recently on the radio. Of the people who are registered as organ donors, 44% of relatives refuse to give consent for the organ donation after death (reversing the donors wishes) and that's a massive loss of potential donors, so if you have registered as an organ donor - and why wouldn't you? - please discuss it with your next of kin to ensure that they carry out your wishes should something happen to you, and give someone else a chance at life.
That's a very moving appeal actd, I carry an organ donor card and as a family we have discussed this in the past....but not for a while, and I shall make a point of raising it again.
I would like to see organ donation being automatic and cards carried only if someone wished to opt out.
In December, Wales changes to an opt-out system, in other words, unless you specifically opt out, you are automatically opted into being an organ donor. With any luck, that will be a success and it will spread - it makes so much more sense.
Thanks for sharing this Actd.
Very inspiring actd
I'm also an organ doner and my wife knows they can have what ever they like from me once I'm gone.
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My wife is too though has expressed they are not allowed to touch her eyes................explain that one to me Lol
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I used to give blood but I switched years ago to donate platelets instead so they stop counting the donations as effectively you don't give blood, they take your blood out spin it in a machine which seperates the platelets and then pump the blood back inyou can't give as often as the body has to re generate the platelets and that takes longer than blood to get back to the normal levels. It's a very odd proccess and takes about an hour, I know actd said he used to do this too.
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GTTS
I used to exclude eyes from my organ donation too - I'm very squeamish about anything to do with my eyes, so I can understand her point, but did eventually change so that they could have those as well.
I thought platelets counted as 2 donations, on the basis that it potentially helped 2 patients to every 1 helped by a unit of whole blood. If you can give platelets, even better - they can take a donation every 4 weeks instead of 3 times a year for whole blood - the only limitation on platelets seems to be more that they usually booked up way in advance on Saturdays. Good for you GTTS 🙂
Haha....mine are up for grabs except the eyes. Odd....