WOW!! That is so cool and quite a commitment!
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Thanks very much for your donations - I prescribe CMV negative blood for my baby patients nearly every working day on the NICU.
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Thanks for all the donations you made - O neg blood is life-saving stuff.
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Wow! Platelets are such a precious resource. When we need them for a patient they need to be specially ordered and motorbike-couriered from a specialist blood bank. Thanks very much for being a donor.
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I must say, the above posts from @Desert-Dan , @ricepad and @linguafood have made me feel very grateful. Blood donations have a huge positive impact. 
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Sasw Springsteen in the Pepsi Arena in Albany many years ago-- a wonderful small arena. People were smoking cigarettes all over the place. As soon as someone in our group lit a joint, all the smokers gave us nasty looks and eventually asked for it to be put out. I was aghast-- this was not the rock and roll I remember.
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I’m an avid blood donor too. I gave sporadically in the past but really up my donations during covid. - 26 units since then. I’m O positive, CMV negative, and am Hero for Babies. I remember a few times when they collected my blood in tiny bags for use in neonates.
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Awesome! This news of so many HOs being blood donor heroes has really made my day.
Thanks 
@MsBean !
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Lame.
I’m an organ donor as well, but that hopefully won’t matter for quite some time (and I’m not too optimistic about the quality of my organs at this point — certainly not after several more years of my lifestyle 
).
I was hoping to be able to donate plasma, but my health history doesn’t allow for that (or blood) anymore 
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I hadn’t heard that term before, but glad to join you in that label.
When I lived back East, the American Red Cross had a little sticker on my blood donation card that said “CMV Hero”. I like “Hero for Babies” much better!!
The blood collection service out here in AZ is called Vitalant, they don’t do anything like that. They do everything by email, portal and smart phone.
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Thanks, but I started pretty much for one reason and one reason only: Free doughnuts. The local blood bank used to have free doughnuts one day a week (Friday?), so I’d schedule my donations to get a doughnut or two. By the time they stopped giving out the doughnuts years later, I had built the habit and now it’s just a thing I do. I have no idea how many gallons I’ve donated by now, but it’s a lot.
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I’d been donating for a few years before I even knew I was CMV negative. One day while completing the intake forms the person just mentioned it. I had no idea what it even meant. Now I am more compelled than ever to donate.
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I’d never even heard of CMV negative before this thread & had to look it up.
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Ditto. Had to go look it up.
I used to donate a LOT (I’m B Positive and had gotten up to about 7-8 gallons in total) until I had a couple of newly anointed stickers who didn’t listen to me re: the scarring in the crook of my elbows and to go a bit lower than that (nope, they tried to go in through the scarring!) and I stopped for awhile and fell out of the habit. Now that I’m on blood thinners, donations are out of the question.
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I had the no idea what they were talking about when I found out.
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Me too. I’m o pos, I donate every two months. I get snacks, water, sometimes t shirts or gift cards. I got a notice after my next to last donation that I had donated a gallon.
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My heart is shattered.
This is such a miserable time. There’s not much in me but rage and sadness.
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