Blood Donation

April 15, 2009 by cryan.com

Today I donated blood at the Red Cross blood drive in the building that I am in. A question came up at the snack table afterwards:

Regulations in the United States allow people to donate whole blood once every 56 days. The waiting period between donations can be different for other blood components. For example, donating only platelets in a process called apheresis requires only a 3 day wait before a person can give again. Donating two units of red blood cells through a similar process doubles the waiting period to 112 days.

This means I'll be able to donate again on Wednesday, June 10, 2009. The whole process took less than an hour, some people took longer because they felt dizy afterwards. I had a slice of Pizza, some mini-chocolate chips and Grape Juice.