One in thirty Australians is a regular blood donor. Every day at large city blood collection centres, in suburban town halls and mobile donation units they line up to take part in a selfless and generous act that will bring great, sometimes life saving, benefit to people they will never know. What donors do is inconvenient, uncomfortable and mildly painful. In a society where overt selflessness is rare, blood donors demonstrate it with daily altruism.
There is nothing that identifies a donor as special as they come in their hundreds; office workers with loosened ties, retired men in short sleeves known by their first name, young professional women in black skirts; ordinary men and women demonstrating extraordinary generosity.
To minimize anxiety the process they undertake has a comforting routine. Glasses of water are followed by the form filling and declarations regarding health, sexual history and recent travel. Have you recently travelled to Northern Queensland or the tropics? Then the questions many never imagined ever being asked; have you ever used drugs, had homosexual sex or used a sex worker? Finally, the general health interrogation; regarding tattoos, dental visits and recent illness. Formal reminders stress the need for honesty. The paperwork is followed by medical procedures to test suitability. Weight, blood pressure and heart rate are noted and blood haemoglobin levels are checked via a finger prick. Those passed fit and well are ushered into the donations hall and invited to lie down and given a choice, left or right arm.
The easing of the needle into the vein is the high point of the procedure. Some donors watch it with casual aplomb, many turn away. The sting is passing and then the body takes over with the heart’s regular pumping ensuring that the collection bag gradually fills. More regular donors may donate plasma or platelets but being a whole blood donor is where it starts for most.
Blood collection programs are common throughout the world but in Australia we are blessed with one of the best; a system underpinned by uniquely Australian values. First, it’s undeniably democratic. In amongst the donor beds and winking machines everyone is the same. The most glamorous, most wealthy and most powerful have nothing more to give than you; between six and eight hundred millilitres of whole blood or plasma. It is difficult to stand out when you are lying down with a needle in your arm.
Second, like a trip to the beach, it costs nothing and will earn you nothing. Whilst in other nations, like the United States, donors can earn approximately fifty dollars per donation, here in Australia donors receive nothing but a thank you, a milkshake and a lamington.
Third, we bring an almost sporting competitiveness to donating with achievement awards at significant stages along the way. Like a Test cricketer building a score towards their first hundred, donors inch gradually towards their twentieth, fiftieth or one hundredth visit. Like a Bill Lawry century, it takes a long time, often decades of regular faithful effort. Most donors are happy to achieve one hundred not out and move towards that number with welling pride. There are of course the star performers, the Bradmans of the donors who can, incredibly, boast six or seven hundred donations.
Finally, like much of what is memorable and valuable in Australian social life, our blood donation system depends on generous volunteerism, the same positive force that builds local communities across Australia. Like surf life saving or Rotary clubs, rural fire brigades or bush regeneration groups, blood donors bring to their task the generous thoughtfulness that holds communities together across our nation. Blood donors are committed to an idea bigger than themselves, to helping others in need. And there is one other thing that makes being a donor special; the contact it brings with professional, gentle and highly skilled staff expert in comforting first timers and so capable in finding a vein in the arm of the longest serving donors. On one level there is a repetitive sameness in their duties but then they also witness daily the most magnificent of human qualities, kindness and generous selflessness.
At the end of the year many can’t donate during the holiday break putting a strain on stocks. If you have always thought about becoming a blood donor, this summer is the time to start. If you have been a donor in the past but have retired think about coming back. The muffin and milkshake after your donation is guilt free and has never tasted better.
Image credit: Australian Red Cross website.
Comentarios