Have You Ever Exchanged Money or Drugs for Sex?

Um, no.  Have you ever had sex with someone who has exchanged money or drugs for sex?  Um, no.  Have you ever had sex with someone whose sexual background you didn't know?  Um, no.  Have you ever had sex with a man who had sex with a man even once?  Um, no. 

These and about 15 other questions make up the "high-risk lifestyle" section on the blood donor questionnaire from Canadian Blood Services.  I know this because I donate blood regularly.    Being asked these questions, confidentially by a Registered Nurse, always makes me laugh because I am so not high-risk lifestyle. 

I didn't always donate blood.  I never knew my blood type until I was pregnant with Girl and then found out it was AB-.  Huh. That's interesting, I thought.  I had to get that injection of whatever it is so my body wouldn't reject the fetus as a foreign object if its blood type wasn't compatible to mine.   Then about a  year later I read that AB- was the rarest type, something like 0.2% of the population.  Huh.  That's interesting, I thought.  It took a couple more years for the idea to percolate through my brain, (because I'm quick-witted like that),  that I should donate my blood.  

So for the past ten years, except for when I was pregnant with Boy and the 6 months after I got my tattoo  I've been going to the local blood donor clinic every 56 days to have the friendly bleeders take a bag of my rare blood.  It only takes an hour,  it doesn't hurt much and you get some juice and cookies at the end of it.  The literature tells me that my unit of blood could save three lives.  A cancer patient or car accident victim or an organ transplant patient.  I'll never know.  I'm doing a good thing by giving up a little bit of my time and my blood to help someone in need.