What's your blood type?

[Jumpindogs]

Originally Posted by ohhwanderlust

Just prepare to get harassed with reminder calls if you have a rare blood group like I do.

What is harassment to you could be a lifesaver to a patient (or patients) in need. At our trauma hospital hospital we regularly have patients (motor vehicle accidents, bicycle accidents, construction accidents, pedestrian struck accidents, gunshots, stabbings, busted aneurysms, liver transplants, open heart surgeries, high risk deliveries, etc.) who use upwards of 20-60 blood products at a crack. Transfusing those patients can severely deplete local blood supplies at which point blood centers start calling for donations as well as importing blood products from other geographical areas.

Additionally, seriously premature infants require multiple transfusions to replace the blood obtained for daily lab testing and these infants can only receive O Negative, CMV Negative packed red blood cells. O Neg, CMV Neg donors are thus in great demand.

Donating blood is an easy and meaningful way to give back to your community. One donation can produce a unit of packed red blood cells, a unit of fresh frozen plasma and contribute to a unit of platelets. Thank you for donating.

[TUMF]

Originally Posted by AK-Cathy

According to the American Red Cross: Population percentages of blood types in the USA

Caucasians African Americans Hispanic Asian
O+ 37% 47% 53% 39%
O - 8% 4% 4% 1%
A + 33% 24% 29% 27%
A - 7% 2% 2% 0.5%
B + 9% 18% 9% 25%
B - 2% 1% 1% 0.4%
AB + 3% 4% 2% 7%
AB - 1% 0.3% 0.2% 0.1%

My (yes I'm proud!) 92 year old, WWII vet father used to get calls all the time as he is AB-.
He's given over 8 gallons!
He's now suffering with Alzheimer's and can't get to them to give but would if he could.
Love ya' dad... and no, he'll never read this, but that's ok -

[stepka]

Originally Posted by FlightAttendant

Why is type A "bad"?

I'm type A+ and we are much more likely to get cancer than the general population. I have cancer.

Also, according to the blood type diet, we are supposed to eat a primarily vegetarian diet due to low stomach acid problems. You guessed it--I have low stomach acid which comes and goes and I can't eat red meat at all right now unless I want to suffer. I do, however, get to eat bread. Yay!

[hannagrande]

My blood type is O+, the type that can be donated to almost every other types. You can find out about your blood type by donating blood; I received my result in 3-week's time after my donation. It was a kinda interesting experience and it felt really good to help other people. There are much fewer people that have the Rh negative blood type all over the world.