For the last five years, there is something I’ve been hanging out to do. I’ve been patiently counting down the years, waiting to do just one thing. To do that thing, I had to make a phone call today (did I mention waiting five years for this moment), only to have my hopes and dreams shattered.

It turns out, despite all my patients, I am not allowed to donate blood.

“So what!” Many of you might be saying, who cares. But you see, since I was sixteen years of age, donating blood has been a big part of my life. All up I did 177 donations, until that day five years ago, during donation 178, when things started to go very wrong.

You see it was during this donation, they noticed a “slight error in the numbers” which turned out to be leukaemia. Yeah, just a minor issue in the figures there. While I was going through my treatment, I received a letter from the Blood Bank thanking me for all the effort I had made to donate, but at this point in time, they can’t take my blood, see you in five years for a reassessment.

Well it turns out that letter was sent out in error, as us blood cancer people are meant to get the “Errrrrr, blood germs, we call barleys” letter instead from the Blood Bank.

So I must say right now, I’m feeling a little lost. Something that was a big part of my life, is now gone forever. The joy I got from having to put up with a little bit of pain, yet knowing at the same time my one hour every two weeks (I did plasma donations) was making a difference for a lot of people. But no more.

Now if you’re one of these people who doesn’t donate because you can’t be stuffed, or you think it will hurt, or you have a fear of needles, well get over it and go donate. Seriously, I’m not going to do the soft sell here, blood is what keeps us alive. Sure I may have done 178 donations, but when I was sick, I had about 30 blood transfusions, and I was only in hospital for six months. As someone with O+ blood, I felt ashamed when I was given O- blood, because I felt that was being wasted on me, and it was too, because despite heaps of people being O+, not enough had donated.

I consider myself lucky, I only needed blood for a short space of time, and not much of it. But there are other people out there who need blood donations for their whole life. So get out there, do your bit, roll up your sleeve, and go enjoy one of the best damn milkshakes you can get for free. I started donating to get over my fear of needles, it didn’t work, but what I would give just to be able to go back to donating blood again.