A Breton blood donor experience

                                                                  A  BRETON BLOOD DONOR'S EXPERIENCE

I was eighteen when I donated my blood for the first time; It was summer. My best friend, Françoise and I felt a little proud but apprehensive as we approached the sparkling white caravan near the covered market in the town center. We wanted to help save lives, of course, but it was also a sort of personal challenge and probably the occasion to impress our friends and our parents. The tables in front of the big caravan were covered with food and the atmosphere really genial.
When Françoise and I were in the last year of our senior High School, we sometimes saw our very strict Head step into the classroom and ask if a blood donor of a specific group could go at once across the street for a transfusion. There was a clinic just opposite the school. We felt slightly mortified not to be the hero or heroin of the day because we were a few months too young.
At the time, donors were often recruited in the army barracks or among the prisoners in the local gaol.
  My friend Françoise felt a little reluctant because she really hated injection needles, but she had decided to be brave and go on for all that.
There really was an unusual mixture of social classes sitting together around the long tables: One or two tramps who claimed they had come for the snack and the red wine, upper middle class people, shopkeepers, employees, workmen, some being obviously reds, and others who were not, and students like Françoise and I. All helped themselves to ham and fresh pâté sandwiches, breton cakes, biscuits, and exchanged smiles, some words, some jokes. All proudly showed their white bandage on the inside of their elbows, feeling a little superior to those who turned pale and had to lie down for a moment again.
Vanitas, vanitatum...
Then years passed. I was A negative, and continued donating my blood once or twice a year. Françoise still came with me, but waited for me outside the caravan. She had fainted at the sight of the transparent tubes, big needles and dark plastic bags, but AFTER giving her blood. We had both just read George Orwell's1984, and Françoise said the worst torture that could have been inflicted on her in that infamous room 101 would have been plastic bags full of blood on the walls. As for me one or two crane flies would have been enough, but I am wandering away from my topic...
I remember...
- Car stickers representing red hearts with that message "donate your blood" that were systematically torn off my car on a specific car park. I didn't understand until I realized Jehovah Witnesses used to gather nearby.
- The really annoyed expression on a jovial man's face when he heard for the very first time: NO, Sir, we can offer you mineral water, an excellent coffee, tea, hot chocolate or fresh fruit juice, but NO alcohol.
- A meeting with the mayor and the local press where we received official congratulations and a medal.
- And that year, when my two year old little girl had a hip operation and was transfused. She was A positive.

Two years later, I was absent-mindedly watching television when I heard a doctor, whose name I have forgotten, who said that all the people who had been transfused these last five years had to be tested for AIDS as soon as possible.
On the next morning, my husband, our little girl and I were at our town Hospital feeling really distressed.
I can still remember that nice smiling doctor who told us: "Don't worry! she was transfused here, in Brittany so she runs no risk at all, except perhaps of having received a drunkard's blood!"
We were only totally reassured when we received the negative results. We even danced for joy!

From that year on, donors had to answer very strict personal questionnaires, even about our travels abroad.
At first there were little incidents. I remember a young inexperienced doctor who asked a stiff upper lipped lady if she had had various sexual partners these... she was furious at him and walked away, while the doctor turned crimson and the people around couldn't help laughing.

These days a computer gives my name every four months and I am politely asked to come, on the phone or by E mail. They take 400cc to 500cc from me each time, twice as much as when I was twenty.

I fainted for the first time two years ago. The new director of a supermarket had organized a blood drive. I had to do my shopping during my lunch break. I was tired and my tension was better than usual, so I donated 600cc, a little too much for me... And I fainted in front of the cash desk. What a turmoil!
Security guards, firemen, the director came and fussed over me, which I quite enjoyed, after all; I even didn't have to pay for my shopping!

Yesterday I donated 480cc exactly. I feel fine. Everything is based on trust. I filled up a very long questionnaire, talked with a doctor. If I had ticked only one case, it meant I could endanger a patient's life, and I could have walked out, and nobody would have asked me any question; I have a telephone number to call if I have the slightest infection in the week to come.

I really feel good, but I can't say the same for my friend Françoise who was crushed to death when a drunken driver bumped into her car at full speed; She was only thirty-five and had two little boys aged 10 and 5, a husband who never married again, a brother and old parents. Each time I donate my blood I think of her, and how I wish I could have given her some of my blood!