Blood Donation

I've given blood for many years, starting with the inter-service ROTC blood drive competitions in college, continuing through my Naval caeer, and for several years afterwards. After awhile I got in the habit of making my appointment for the next day I was allowed to give blood. However, I've only given once since I've moved to Texas, and I have a poor excuse. I've grown used to the procedure the Red Cross uses, and was uncomfortable the first time I used a different service in Minneapolis (this was before Minneapolis has a Red Cross chapter). The time I donated down here in Texas was for a blood drive held in our work parking lot. Now I'm on their list and will probably give more consistently.

The Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas gave me a call today urgently asking for my donation. Apparently supplies of my blood type (B negative) are very low and they needed donations for surgery TODAY. So, I had a relatively healthy (Subway) lunch and proceeded on in. I've given blood after having a grease-loaded lunch before and won't do that again--you can actually see the grease separate from the blood in the bag as you're giving blood. Yech...

I've always been confused about what blood types mean and which are compatible with eachother and found that wikipedia had a nice explanation. I thought that I had the worst blood type (for those who need some blood) as I have a rare type (B negative, 2%) and can only receive blood of my type or the universal donor type (O-). However, maybe its the universal donor type that is really getting screwed... they make up 7%, that's the ONLY type they can receive and everyone else can also use their type--so I imagine it could be in shorter supply than mine. Not really fair, huh! Maybe someone I know with an MPH (I think I know two now who read my blog) can tell me who gets screwed over the most?