I had my doubts about this, but I’m over it now. I wasn’t sure how good the shows would be and I wasn’t familiar with the artists in any depth. But hey, it’s not like I’m paying to go and I don’t have to listen to the whole thing.
I went to my fortnightly appointment to donate 7.5×10^11 platelets and decided to give a listen to a recent show by Art Brut. Wow, a lot of fun and just the right length (about 45 minutes). I rarely have that long a block of time (at least not that I can count on) so it worked out well. The sound was a little uneven — some jumpy levels — but it was a great show, lots of energy and the band was plainly having fun, as was the crowd.
Check it out.
Boring prattle about blood product donation after the jump. You’ve been warned.
Curious factoid about my donations: I mentioned that 50 minutes is about average for me (the total above is a double, twice as many as most people give), since I had a new (to me) phlebotomist/technician/person-with-sharp-objects. She said actually I’m a quick donor: some people take as long as two and a half hours. 70 minutes looks to be average.
And a single platelet donation provides the equivalent of 6-10 whole blood donations. So a double is 12-20, and I just read that triples are possible. Yikes. I’m a freak but not to that extent.
I don’t use the freak tag lightly; people have asked a. how I get done so fast and b. why a double, and I have to pass it off as something unusual in me, not in them if they’re not able to do that. I’m glad to do it. I’ve done 11 in the past year and I have no idea how many since I started (in 1993/94 or so).
And when you look at who needs it:
… a child with leukemia;
… a woman undergoing chemotherapy for cancer;
… a man who needs open heart surgery;
… a person who needs an organ transplant;
… people whose bone marrow is not functioning properly.
Is there anyone on that list you wouldn’t want to help? There’s a boy on the ten year’s old soccer team who has had a kidney transplant. Someone who did what I did today helped him get through that.
So when did you donate last? Are you on the bone marrow registry? No matches so far for me, and I can’t say I am looking forward to a 1/2 inch drill in my hip. But the benefits are easy to understand.