Give the Gift of Life

No knitting content tonight, because I gave blood after work today. As usual, I am bruised all around the puncture site and it's sore enough that knitting doesn't appeal much.

Why do I do this since it requires needles of the NOT GOOD type, ouchies on finger tips where they test for anemia at the very point where I type, total strangers asking questions about my sex life all the way back to 1977 and bruises bad enough to sideline me from my knitting or stitching for a day or two?

Simple. I exist because back in October of 1955 five people whose names I will never know and who I have no way of thanking stopped into a blood bank in Michigan and donated. Their gift saved my life and my mother's. I needed a major blood flush and my mother is a slow clotter and needed two pints of blood to survive the cesarean.

In a place and time without blood banks and generous donors we would have both just been statistics in a log of childbirth fatalities. That's a sobering thought.

So I pay it forward, just like my unknown benefactors did. Over the years I've given well over three GALLONS of blood - a pint at a time. So I encourage you to stop by the blood drive at the office or at your church. Drop in to a collection center.

Share the gift.