Graeme Virtue: Out for blood - a donor’s diary

A donation visit begins with mild panic but ends with the satisfaction of the post-procedure biscuit

BLOOD is designed to be frightening. We have an innate understanding that it’s supposed to stay inside our bodies, rather like the way entrails should never become extrails. Just the word “blood” can conjure visions of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, where gallons of the stuff pour out of a lift in unnerving slow motion. But “blood transfusion” evokes something totally different: the deft bustle of nurses taking you through a procedure that’s really just a preamble to the actual prize, a cup of tea and a biscuit. Thanks to decades of gently pitched public awareness campaigns, the process of giving blood is something everyone is familiar with, even though 70 per cent of the population still haven’t become so familiar as to actually go through with it.

It’s 9.30am on a nippy November morning at Glasgow’s main blood donation centre on Nelson Mandela Place, a large open-plan room with desks, consulting cubbyholes and 20 or so barber-esque chairs. This has been my local centre for two years and, compared with smaller mobile units, it has a reassuring, constantly busy atmosphere. In my more poetic moments, perhaps caused by the act of donation itself, it can sometimes seem like there’s a detectable flow in the room as donors work their way round a circulatory system of administrative eddies and clinical process that echoes the natural motion of its subject.

Certainly, being able to focus on the constant swirl of staff has been a comfort whenever, glancing down at the metal spike hooked into the crook of my elbow, I’ve felt a tiny rush of primordial panic. To willingly allow yourself to leak blood is no small triumph over ancient evolutionary instincts; everyone who does it is therefore a sort of cosmic hero. That’s, partly, why you can claim a sticker that says “I Saved A Life Today”.

But I had always wondered why donors on the east wall got to watch a flatscreen TV while my regular section was left alone with our thoughts. I’m a “whole blood” donor, giving a pint up to four times a year, though at best I’ve managed three. There are 26,000 Scots who donate whole blood every week. But there are also 1,000 or so platelet donors, A and O blood types who are suitable candidates for a more involved procedure that harvests valuable platelets – the component of blood that stops bruising and bleeding, vital for cancer and leukaemia patients – before returning red blood cells to the body. At around 90 minutes, the sessions are considerably longer than for whole blood and can only take place at one of five locations in Scotland, but you can donate far more regularly. And in Glasgow you get to do it near that flatscreen TV.

I’m here to donate, but at this time on a Thursday, it’s only platelet donors who are being processed. Joanne Holmes, a 25-year-old sports attendant at Stirling University, is squeezing a stress ball with her right hand and checking emails on her mobile with her left. “My niece needed platelets when she was four, so that’s when I wanted to find out more about them,” she says. Holmes has been raising awareness about donating through social media, whether intentionally or not. “A few of my friends have been asking about giving blood because they can see online that I’ve checked in here.”

Like most platelet donors, she’s become familiar with the boxy device alternately taking and replacing blood through the tube in her arm. “I’ve got about four minutes to go,” says Holmes, translating a display of fluctuating numbers and read-outs. “It’ll have taken about 80 minutes today. Not a personal best.”

The flatscreen is showing Jeremy Kyle, a man clinically shown to increase blood pressure, but few of the donors appear to be paying particularly close attention. Sly napping, however, is not allowed. Ian Stewart, a 54-year-old retired policeman, has a well-thumbed science-fiction novel to hand. He stays in Renfrewshire and travels into the city centre to donate every three weeks. “I’m fortunate in that I work part-time for myself so I’m flexible,” he says. “I’m also big enough that I can give a triple donation.”

I ask if his career in policing gave him any insight into the need for donors. “I was based in the city latterly,” he says. “So let’s just say I’m very conscious of the demands on blood transfusion.” He has great respect for donors. “I think helping people is the main driving part of it,” he says. “If you look around here, these are just ordinary folk, but everyone has that willingness to help others.”

Tom Bradley is a bloody legend. Today is his 634th donation – in fact, he’s the most active donor in the country. But unlike a striker’s goal-scoring record, which can stand for decades, the wiry 68-year-old from Barrhead will lose his title when he stops donating. Bradley is a semi-retired joiner, so has seen plenty of his own blood over the years. He shows me a nasty split on the nail of his left ring finger. “I got a skelf the other day, it was a cracker. Went in right up to the air bubble but I managed to pull it out.”

Bradley first gave blood in 1967, and had such a bad experience he considered never going back. “The needle that went in was like a blunt school pen,” he says. Three years later, when the child of a family friend was diagnosed with leukaemia, Bradley signed up again.

More than 550 of his donations have been platelets, so he has seen the technology advance over the years. When donating at Stobhill Hospital in Springburn in the 1970s, samples had to be “spun” off-site; when the red blood cells were returned to his body, they had cooled dramatically. “It was like eating cold ice-cream,” he says, with an expression that suggests none of the usual joys of consuming ice-cream. “The nurses were sitting with basins of hot water putting compresses on us.”

The process has since been refined: where once you would need a needle in each arm, now it is all-in-one. It still takes time, however. Bradley has spent well over 1,000 hours in this slightly reclined position. He doesn’t read a book, or watch the telly. “I just sit and meditate, plan my next bike journey.” Blessed with low blood pressure, Bradley says he’ll keep donating as long as he passes the age assessment test. “A lot of people who don’t know about it go, ‘You must have dead rare blood’,” he says. “But I’m O+, it’s common as muck. And that’s why they need it.”

When I’m called to make my own whole blood donation, it’s the usual procedure, and within that familiarity lies a certain comfort. As you are passed down a chain of nurses, each politely requests to hear the mantra of your name, date of birth and address. This is obviously to ensure the right blood is going in the right bag, but it also works as a calming mantra. Regular nosebleeds as a child mean that haemoglobin doesn’t give me the heebie-jeebies, but it’s a better man than me that isn’t chary of needles. Having nominated my left arm, and arranged myself in the green leather chair, it takes a second or so to actually locate a pulse. “It just wasn’t where I thought it would be,” says my attending nurse, smiling.

After fastidiously cleaning the target area, a not unpleasant sensation, it’s time for the pricking. While some people look away, or travel mentally to their happy place, I think it’s instructive to see the needle break the skin, to see the crimson flow creep down through the tubular harness with the smoothness of a Castrol GTX advert. This time it takes eight minutes to fill the bag, which seems ridiculously easy compared with platelet donors, and after the exquisite relief of the needle being removed, it’s always nice to be asked to help with the derigging, compressing cotton wool on your wound to allow the nurse the time to bag up the blood. It’s just my second pint of O+ this year, a poor effort compared with my dedication to IPA.

At the cluster of tables near the kitchen, other post-op donors are claiming their reward. The range of biscuits on offer, from Walkers shortbread to Tunnock’s teacakes, would all make it into my granny’s “good tin”. In the mid-2000s, when Taxi bars mysteriously vanished from supermarket shelves, the donation centre still had access to some clandestine supply, and many wafer-deprived donors apparently took the opportunity to stock up.

There is a genuine satisfaction, possibly psychologically reinforced by all those TV campaigns, when you linger over your cup of coffee and teacake. This ten-minute respite before rejoining the world is primarily enforced for medical reasons, to give your body a chance to adjust to losing a twelfth of its metabolic vim. But it’s also just enough time to marvel at what’s happening around you: the buzzing, unfussy miracle of a voluntary medical procedure that not only saves lives but, in the case of cancer patients and the elderly, demonstrably improves and extends them.

Recently, a Helsinki-based artist displayed blood packs in the shape of Christmas stockings, and even if it was intended as a provocation, it was a useful reminder that blood, especially at this time of year, is a gift that the majority of us can give – and all of us, in more fraught circumstances, can receive. Trying to overtake Tom Bradley might be ambitious, but maybe it’s worth a try.