As someone who doesn’t like needles or blood, what I’m about to say might sound weird--go and donate blood! I’ve heard just about every reason for why people don’t want to go donate blood. People say it’s scary, that needles terrify them, that they don’t like seeing blood, that they’ve never thought about it, etc. Whatever. I’m here to tell you why all those reasons are kind of BS and why you should schedule an appointment with your nearest blood bank and go and donate.

Whenever people tell me that, I kind of want to laugh because I am probably the king of worst donation stories ever, yet every 56 days I’m scheduling another appointment to go ahead and donate. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a donation appointment go according to plan. I’ve thrown up, passed out (multiple times), gotten sick, had sore veins, have been deferred numerous times, etc., except I know that all of that inconvenience is worth it. I’ve had people ask me why I continuously try and donate when I’ll most likely have another bad donation, but the truth is, my inconvenience is so little compared to what I can give to others.

So here are some hard facts to convince you to go and donate. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood, which is bewildering to me. When a healthy donor gives 1 pint of blood, they can save up to three lives with that, which makes me speechless. The number of blood donors in the U.S. in a single year is 6.8 million people, which sounds like a lot except an estimated 38% of the U.S. population is eligible to donate blood whenever, but less than 10% of that group actually do each year.

In a given year at the American Red Cross, only 24% of donors donate occasionally, 26% of donors are first-time donors and 50% of donors are regular and consistent. So the next time you think, “well people are already donating,” think about these facts and remind yourself “wait--actually maybe they aren’t.” Some of these facts alone made me change my mind to begin donating regularly.

The way that I see it, blood is a donation that can’t be replaced by money. It’s a need that is very tangible and can really only help people when they actually donate blood, not just money or time. I don’t have money and I don’t really have time to consistently make a difference, but blood… donating blood is something I can do for people who are in need. I would like to remind everyone here, that in the U.S., we have a lot of privilege that we have never even thought about, something I didn’t think about until I was in the position that needed to think about. My uncle, who lives in Mexico, had to have cardiovascular surgery, except since Mexico privatizes some forms of health care, it’s extremely expensive and hard to do. In order for my uncle to have that life-saving surgery, he had to find at least 7 donors for blood type, which as you know, not many people donate. The same situation happened again with my aunt who needed three donors to match her blood type and it was an extremely long process to find donors in time for her surgery.

Because of all these reasons, I really don’t think there’s any reason why you should NOT donate blood. The feeling of gratitude and unselfish goodness that comes with knowing you gave someone a gift...that is priceless. Donating blood comes with a lot of perks, which can also include the free snacks afterwards, but mostly it’s the feeling that you may have saved a life.

To schedule an appointment to donate blood, you can click your preferred link:

http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood

http://www.mbc.org/Donate-Blood/Schedule-Blood-Don...