Just a suggestion

Did you know that I have never given blood?

Never. Like, never.

Even in high school, when giving blood meant you got out of at least three classes, and if you acted like you might faint, maybe even the whole afternoon. Nope. I never did.

The thing is, I have a bad history with needles. I used to hyperventilate just getting a routine vaccination. Give blood? Not on my list.

Then, I couldn't get pregnant, and we started fertility treatments. And I had to put on my big girl panties, as they say.  I used to tell myself, when the shots really hurt: If I can't handle this, what in the world am I going to do when I go into labor? And that was the end of my problem with needles. Don't even get me started on the acupuncture.

[And let me tell you, if you are the type of person who is more scared of the epidural needle than actual labor--if your contractions really hurt, you would eat that needle with a spoon if it would make the pain go away.]

But back to giving blood. My friend Julie, one of Six Feet, needed a blood transfusion last year when she gave birth to her first baby. At the time, I thought little of it. She's not really a whiner like me, and then there was the excitement of the actual baby to distract us. But this past Christmas, for Secret Santa, she suggested that whoever had her name give blood as her present. And I felt so ashamed for having wasted decades of my life so afraid of a dumb needle that I wouldn't go and give a simple gift like that.

Then, a few weeks ago a member of my Bible Study group got the news that her precious three year old niece had been diagnosed with aplastic anemia, and then that her siblings were not possible matches for a marrow transplant. I've never met this little girl or her parents, but this struck me.  The possibility of life without MB is incomprehensible to me, as I'm sure a life without their baby is to her parents.

THEN, I read this this morning, and followed her link over to Be The Match, the website for the National Marrow Donor Program. It took me ten minutes and cost me nothing* to join the registry. Maybe I will never get called to donate, but if I ever do, I would welcome the opportunity to give thanks for my baby by helping to save someone else's.

I hope you might consider doing this, too.

*use the promo code childrens before the end of March.