Friday, October 14

realtime blood donation


Carter Bloodcare - 1 gallon donor Posted by Picasa

I got an email about 3pm today, reminding me that enough time has passed and I can donate another unit of blood. The email contained a nice "To make an appointment at your neighborhood donor center, please click on the following link.", so .. I tried it. Hmm .. it says there are appointments available today, the next one being at 3:30. Well, why push it? Let's pick the 4pm one and then mosey thataway. What are the odds the system is realtime?

Well, it worked. They finished the "mini-physical" and I was dripping blood in record time; I was done by 4:45 and had caught up on some reading (I commonly HotSync my PDA before donating blood, so I'll have something to read in case Oprah's not on). Today's numbers? Iron (hemoglobin) 14.4 | BP 110/72 | Pulse 80 | Temp 98.5F ... I'll wait a few days and call for the cholesterol score.

Was there a downside to the web scheduling? Only that it doesn't work with the Firefox browser (well, everything worked until I pressed [Submit] at which point it chortled at me .. I had to fire up Internet Explorer instead). Maybe the same people who designed this website did the one for FEMA?

I came home, and (following the instructions to Have A Nice Dinner) sucked down a bowl of Jewish Penicillin Chicken Soup.

About the only improvement I can think of deals with the actual blood donation; why can't they take my blood online? Is there no one developing a USB Blood Sucker?

1 comment:

Jenna-Lynn said...

It's cool that you donate blood. I definitely want to one day when my piercings aren't "too recent".