Needles

A post by a follower of mine made me think. I have been pricked by a lot of needles in my day. I mean, besides the normal flu shots, that time I needed a tetanus shot because I got a fish hook in my eye, and generic needles everyone gets as a kid, I have had a lot of needles.

I had allergy shots for 4 years. My mom would take me to allergy shots once a week, and I would get 3 shots. Turns out, among other things I'm allergic to, I'm allergic to dust mites and grass pollen. And cats. But I guess cats are a lot harder to put into shot form compared to grass pollen and dust mites. Anyway, those shots were small, and didn't really hurt that much.

In college I started to donate blood. At first I just donated the normal way, one pint at a time, every 60 days. I donated somewhere between 15 to 20 pints before I moved up to the big leagues of blood donation. I started doing apherysis(I have no idea how to spell it). During the aforementioned procedure, you have a needle put in each arm, and lay there for 2 hours while they pull plasma from your blood. Though this takes longer than average blood donations, the Red Cross will let you donate 20 times a year this way. Which is a lot more than the 6 times you can donate whole blood.

So in summation, and staying completely on topic, donate blood with the Red Cross. It helps out your fellow man, doesn't take very long, and is a generally good thing to do. So get donating!