TLDR: kid is sad that she couldn’t make a local blood bank. Aim high, folks. Feels more like your selfless attempt just didn’t work out instead of like it’s your failure
Oh neat. I did not know they did that. I guess you’re put on an “on call for business” type registry then? That would be kind of crappy on all sides if you’re on vacation when they call and it doesn’t work with others on list either. I imagine that’s way less likely to happen in high pop areas… but if if was in mine and I couldn’t make it and it’s absolutely do or die, I think I would have a pretty sore conscience if the other person died. At least for a little bit.
The only person I know that has it is one of my cousins (turns out blood type doesn’t come up in conversations that often) and I think he still does it once a month. But being on tap for emergencies makes sense to me too.
I always wanted to donate blood once I learned you could do that in my teens, but we don’t have that service this far north where I live. Super isolated, next decently sized cities are 20-30 hour drives away kind of isolated.
It kind of bothered me a bit. I figured it was a combination of not having the space in the actual hospital and not having an adequate supply of livestock to harvest from.
I saw mobile blood banks on tv once and got super ambitious. I wanted to try and organize one, even if it was only once or twice a month. It was a nice idea, but not a very good one.
Turns out shelf life is pretty low and supply is very limited. There’s probably just the bare minimum stored here, just enough to last someone getting helivacced to another hospital down south. And it just doesn’t make sense to store it here anyway.
I always thought that it was only because there are specialists down there, and to be here you kind of need to be a generalist. Same with many routine surgeries, they get flown out for those too. So if it’s not “have this surgery here and now or guaranteed fatal”, the risk of something going wrong with severe bleeding isn’t worth it.
Made me feel kind of dumb for not considering that, but I was still pretty disappointed tbh.