Just Another Fangirl

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Spinach Salad: Spinach, manchego cheese, apples, walnuts, citrus vinaigrette, shaved rhinoceros horn.

Strawberry Fields: Mixed greens, feta, strawberries, pistachios, earwax vinaigrette.

Southwest Salad: Shredded iceberg lettuce, home-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, Monterrey Jack cheese, 6 live rounds of ammunition, chipotle ranch dressing, blue corn tortilla chips. (Also available vegan!)

Aunt Sheila’s Crazy Caesar: Baby gem lettuce, croutons, shaved Parmesan, homemade Caesar dressing, hunks of fiberglass insulation.

Summer sees both a drop off in donations and, at least for our trauma center, a spike in traumas. Trauma centers across the US are in danger of running out of blood for our trauma patients TODAY, which is very scary but, unlike much of the other scary national news coming across our screens these days, is something you can help fix immediately and directly.

Blood donation is relatively easy and provides an immediate impact to people in your community -- or even farther! The coolest thing the Red Cross does is tell you where your donations end up. My last donation got shipped from Utah all the way to the University of Philadelphia. (Enjoy my B+ vibes, Philly.)

Also, you get snacks and sometimes gift cards and free swag. If you squeeze a visit in by July 31, you can get a free Fandango movie ticket. (They're doing Hello Kitty swag in September and you bet your ass I already have appointments.)

If you're new to donating, some tips:

Drink plenty of water the night before and before your appointment. The more water, the more plump your veins are and the faster your goes.

Women often get deferred because of low iron levels. Over-the-counter iron supplements a few days before a donation will help boost your count, as will eating iron rich foods. (Cheerios are always my go-to iron boosters.) Don't schedule donations when you're menstruating.

If you are deferred for low iron or vital signs issues, you can try again within 24 hours.

If you've had a tattoo or piercing in the last three months, you will be deferred until a full three months have passed.

Don't donate on an empty stomach. Dehydration and low blood sugar contribution to fainting and dizzy spells.

After donating, don't exercise for 24 hours. You'll likely notice a dip in your tolerance for a few days after a donation as your system adjusts.

If you don't like needles, look away when they poke you and don't look at the donation site. They usually cover the needle during the donation process.

The initial poke does hurt, but the rest of the donation should be painless. If you feel burning, stinging, or any other abnormal sensation from the entry site, tell a phlebotomist and they'll help you out.

If you're like me and you have difficult veins, you can still give! Being hydrated, doing arm curls, and having an electrolyte drink can help plump your veins up. Ask for the most experienced phlebotomist on the floor to draw your blood. They're less likely to dig around or miss on a difficult vein.

While the majority of blood donations have zero issues, bad donations do happen. Sometimes it's a bad draw, an equipment issue, or your body just not cooperating; it sucks and it's not fun, but you'll usually come out of it with a bruise and know how you can make your experience better. Please don't give up because of one bad experience.

Also, some good news: Type O positive is the most popular type of blood, and it's also the most common in the USA! If you don't know your blood type, there's a good chance you're O+. Even if you're not, your donation is still needed. Type AB is needed for plasma donations, for example.

Black ppl are encouraged to donate because they're most likely be able to best match the the antigen phenotype of the sickle cell patient, many of whom are also black.

Sickle cell patients require regular blood transfusions throughout their life, and with every transfusion there's a risk they develop antibodies which increasingly makes it difficult to get crossmatched blood.

By getting as phenotypically matched blood as possible, it lowers the risk of the patient developing antibodies. When it is not possible to give phenotypically matched blood, we're forced to compromise and cannot give fully phenotype matched blood which increases risk of developing antibodies.

The more ppl who donate, the more likely we won't have to do compromise like this.

Type AB plasma is universal plasma donor, similar to how type O is universal RBC donor.

Platelets are also crucial for major surgeries such as heart surgery as well as patients with mass blood lost.

Canada:

UK:

Australia:

Germany:

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

"Why is he gray?"