Bolt: What is this
red liquid coming from my paw?
Mittens: It’s called blood, hero.
Bolt: Do I need it?
Mittens: Yes. So if you want to keep it inside your body where it
belongs, you should stop jumping off trucks doing eighty on the interstate!
Bolt (2008)
 |
| Honestly, I was not expecting to find a stock photo of someone giving blood, so, although I’m not actually obliged to credit her, I nevertheless offer my thanks to Lynn Greyling at publicdomainpictures.net. |
Those of you with particularly
good memories may recall that the first of my new year’s resolutions for this
year was to become a blood donor.1 I made my first donation a couple
of weeks ago and today received a letter containing thanks, a snazzy keyring,
and a wallet-sized card informing me that my blood type is A-positive – so I
now feel rather like a proper donor, and consequently not too much of a
hypocrite for writing this post.
Here’s the thing: only four per
cent of the UK population give blood regularly.2 Four.
Granted, some people are too young (under seventeen) or too old (over
sixty-six) to donate, and others have health conditions or other reasons which
prevent them from doing so, but the fact remains that a majority of people could
be blood donors, yet only four per cent actually are. And, having
thought about my own reasons for not signing up to donate sooner, and about
conversations I’ve had, I can only theorise that the main reasons why the
proportion is so low are simply apathy and squeamishness. So the following list
is intended as a gentle shove out of any such apathy and squeamishness in which
you, O Best Beloved Reader,3 may be currently residing. Here are
five reasons to give blood.
1)
It saves lives.
Let’s kick things off
straightforwardly enough: there are people alive today who would not be if
donated blood had not been available for them. So, you know, if other people
not dying is something you’re on board with, blood donation would seem like a
pretty good idea.
There’s a scene in the first ever
episode of the CBBC drama Young Dracula in which Mr Branagh, in search
of his son Robin, heads to the castle into which the Dracula household recently
moved, in flight from an angry Transylvanian peasant mob, and knocks on the
door, to which a sign reading ‘Blood doners wanted’ has been attached. The door
is answered by Count Dracula’s servant Renfield: “You rang?”4
“Sorry to bother you,” begins Mr
Branagh.
“Have you come to donate blood?” interrupts
Renfield.
Mr Branagh is confused: “What?”
“The sign,” explains Renfield, before
repeating, “Have you come to donate blood?”
“No,” replies Mr Branagh. “Look–”
“It’s for a good cause,” Renfield
encourages him.
“What cause?”
“Lunch.”
“No, I’m here because – did you
just say ‘lunch’?”
Renfield backtracks. “Um, no, I’ve
got – ahem – I’ve got a cough.”
A few moments
later, Renfield ends up advising Mr Branagh that, if he doesn’t want to donate
blood, he should sling his hook, and slamming the door in his face. Count
Dracula is none too pleased: “‘Sling your hook’? That was a ten-pint delivery!”
“But he said he
didn’t want to give blood!” protests Renfield.
“They never want
to give blood!” Count Dracula snarls at him. “That’s why I’ve got these!”
He bares his fangs.
 |
| One assumes this random vampire is hiding some similarly threatening fangs behind that cape. |
I reckon a little
thought given to why this scene is amusing is quite telling. It’s funny because
it’s incongruous: Count Dracula’s lunch is patently not what most people would
consider a good cause for blood donation, as the Count himself is well aware,
and so Renfield, by asking for willing donations, is clearly barking up the
wrong tree. The reason the NHS, by contrast, can plausibly ask for willing
donations, is because there seems, oddly enough, to be something of a general
consensus among humans that saving people’s lives is, by and large at least, an
actual good cause.
2)
The process is really straightforward.
Step 1: book an appointment on the
NHS Blood and Transplant website.5 They’ll suggest venues based on
your postcode and it only takes a few clicks to sort everything out.
Step 2: fill in the form they send
you in the post. It’s just yes/no questions to make sure there aren’t any
glaring obstacles to you being able to donate; a couple of minutes is probably
all you’ll need.
Step 3: turn up, with your
filled-in form, and do what the lovely NHS people tell you. You’ll most likely
be in and out in under an hour.
And that’s it. Easy peasy lemon
squeezy.
3)
It’s not nearly as unpleasant as you may be dreading.
I’ll be honest: I don’t like
needles. I especially don’t like them when they’re left in for any length of
time. So having one in my arm for seven minutes and forty-three seconds, which
is apparently how long my first donation took, is not at all my idea of the
most fun in the world. Nevertheless, I genuinely found giving blood to be a
surprisingly relaxing experience.
Much as I can detect your
cynically raised eyebrows even from here, do please hear me out. For a start,
the special blood-donation chairs are really comfy and recline at a very
pleasant angle, and the nurses will go out of their way to make sure you’re not
uncomfortable; I, for example, was given a cosy blanket in case I should get
cold having taken my jacket off. The actual putting in of the needle is,
admittedly, a little unpleasant, as you might expect, but, after a few seconds,
you stop noticing it. Then you spend the next few minutes staring at the
ceiling doing very gentle clenching exercises. Being, as I was, in the state of
mild stress that never really seems to go away once one’s third year of
university has begun, it was actually very welcome to spend a little while
doing something other than working or feeling as if I really ought to be
working.6 (It’s not just me, either: I was talking to a housemate of
mine who gave blood at a similar time to me and she agreed that, in those few
minutes, she was the most chilled she’d been all day.) So the actual donation process
is really quite unobjectionable. And afterwards, you get to drink squash and
eat delicious sugary snacks until such time as you feel inclined to leave.
 |
| These attractive biscuits may or may or not be representative of the kinds of delicious sugary snacks available at blood donation sessions in your local area. I personally had a Penguin, a Club, and some custard creams. |
4)
You have the resources.
I expect many of us who are living
on student loans and whatever cash we can persuade our parents to top them up
with have grand ideas about all the good causes we’d like to support
financially once we’re earning enough of a salary to feasibly do so. I expect
many of us who find ourselves making decisions about which bits of work we’re
going to leave aside until pre-exam revision, because we simply can’t find the
hours in the day to get everything done while still keeping ourselves
functioning, have grand ideas about the good causes to which we’d like to give
our time could we spare it. Personally, I’m pretty sure that my main problem in
the areas of time and money is not so much the amount I have but the way I manage
it, but in any case, when it comes to blood, there aren’t many of us who don’t
have enough of the stuff sloshing about inside us that we can’t spare just
under a pint of it every few months. If you want to be more generous, but feel
it would be irresponsible to give away any more of your money or any more of
your time, give blood.
5)
It imitates Christ.
“My blood seems to know there are
souls to atone.
It gives with no concern for its own
And it will not stop until every
drop is spilled.” – Pas Neos, ‘The Joy Set Before Me (The Anointing, Last Meal,
and Garden Prayer)’, Who Do You Say I Am? (2012)
It was at Momentum earlier this
year that I first came across the notion of blood donation being just another
manifestation of the generosity asked of us as Christians, and it was a notion
that really struck me. What does it say about us if we’re prepared to meticulously
tithe or exceed a tithe, if we’ll happily give over a few hours of our week to
unpaid service, and yet we shrink from giving of our own bodies? Do we still
think we own them? Has it not yet sunk in that we were bought at a price?7
Are we not yet really prepared to present ourselves as living sacrifices?8
And on top of that, are we not
aiming to be imitators of God, as beloved children, and to walk in love, as
Christ loved us and gave himself up for us?9 Gave himself up for us –
and bled, pouring out his blood of the covenant for many for the forgiveness of
sins.10 Will we consider him shedding his blood for our sake, even
when we were still his enemies, on the cross, in all its appalling brutality – and
then refuse to shed our own for anyone else’s sake in the safe, orderly,
hygienic context of the modern NHS?
So you’re saying that not giving
blood is a sin. Well,
no, it’s obviously not as clear cut as all that. But I am saying that I would
strongly encourage anyone who would call him- or herself a follower of Jesus
and doesn’t currently give blood to have a serious think about why
exactly not. Because if it is down to apathy or squeamishness, how can
such things stay standing when set alongside the cross?
My aim is not – my aim is never
– to guilt-trip (Jesus already absolved everyone who will trust in him of
all guilt once and for all by his sacrifice on the cross, so it’s completely
missing the point to attempt to imitate him out of a sense of guilt), but
rather, as I said above, to offer a gentle shove to those who might need it. If
we’re in Christ, we’re set free from slavery to things like apathy and
squeamishness, and empowered to follow his example of sacrificial love. Giving
blood is, I believe, one small but significant way in which we might follow
that example.
Footnotes
1 See ‘That Kind of Woman’ under
January 2016 in the box on the right.
2 According to the NHS website: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Blood-donation/Pages/Introduction.aspx.
3 If you’re wondering, yes, that is
a reference to Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. ‘O Best Beloved’ is
such a pleasing phrase.
4 It occurs to me that he didn’t,
actually, but never mind.
5 Indeed, I’ll provide a link for
you to make it even easier: https://my.blood.co.uk/home.
6 “So you’re advocating blood-letting
for stress relief,” was one response to my having expressed this opinion. And
no, I’m not – there are, as I hope this post will have shown, much better
reasons to give blood than that – but it was quite a bonus how relaxing the
whole process was.
7 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+6&version=ESVUK.
Yes, the context here is one of sexual immorality, but it isn’t as if we only
become not our own specifically when we’re considering using prostitutes.
9 Ephesians 5:1-2: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians+5&version=ESVUK.
10 And that one’s Matthew 26:28: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+26&version=ESVUK.
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