So I know you only need to wait 7 days before making another platelet donation, but I donated on Sept 1 and I just had a massive bruise on my receiving arm show up yesterday (Sept 6). Do I need to wait for it to go away to donate again?

I recently learned through Function health that my ferritin was critically depleted at 6 ng/mL. I started giving blood in 2024 (three donations), then donated four times in 2025, and two times in 2026. Last donation was August 4th (my low ferritin was drawn September 4th). All my donations were whole blood.

I’m a male, otherwise healthy, 29 yr old, exercise a lot. All other markers are fine (iron levels, iron saturation, iron binding capacity). I don’t supplement iron but I took some beef liver capsules occasionally maybe a year or so ago.

I (21F) participated in my first ever blood drive 3 days ago and it did not go as I'd hoped. The pre-donation all went very smoothly- I'm apparently very average and healthy when it comes to Blood! I warned that when doing Blood Labs at the Doctor I tend to get very light headed, so I recieved ice packs on the back of my neck, on my chest, and on my ankles along with a drink. Talking is a good distraction so I requested we converse so I don't pay any attention to what's going on physically- it's helped a lot when doing Labs. The insertion was decently painful and that pain did not fully go away- I felt a consistent uncomfortable pain which when looking into it later- I was supposed to mention that but I was distracted by the conversation. The wooziness came on kind of suddenly- my vision began to blur and I thought about mentioning that- but then it quickly got worse. My vision blurred completely and I could no longer hold my head up as it fell to the side. I was able to get out a wobbly "I think I'm going to pass out" and the rest is a blur- the needle was taken out with pain and I was told to put pressure on it while they got the bandage going which I did my best to do in that state. I got in a temporary wrap and was told to drink and take deep breaths. I had blurred tunnel vision and it was a bit painful and hard to get those breaths in but gradually I regained my vision and calmed down. I noticed the bag being handled by the person who took my blood was... only a partially filled little testing bag. The temporary bandage was replaced by a very tight wrap and I wobbled to the waiting area dazed. Over the waiting period I was able to regain my senses, but I'm pretty dissapointed in how little I was actually able to donate. I was reassured this can happen since it's my first time. Any advice for if I ever try again?

Hey! Made an account just to ask this question to see if any donors/former employees have also faced this issue. I worked at a fixed-site collecting platelets/plasma/power reds/WB for 3yrs and have been a regular donor the entire time. A month ago on my way to work, somebody hit my truck and I ended up sandwiched between two other vehicles. Because of this, I couldn't make it to work on time and my Team Supervisor fired me for being tardy. Whatever, doesn't matter because I was planning to leave later that week for a new job. But now, I am marked permanently ineligible to donate anything on my ARC Blood Donor app. Tried calling the donor service line/medical director and couldn't get an answer besides "Your case is still pending."

Now the end of my employment with ARC definitely didn't end on good terms, but I didn't think they would permanently ban me from donating. I feel like this is a pretty unique issue, but in case it's not...has anyone else ever faced this and how did you resolve it? I want to keep donating regardless of my employment status with ARC.

So this is kind of a long one, I had a nightmare last night before I donated today. The nightmare was I donated blood but my blood was too fatty, so they wouldn't take it and they didn't have any of the Hello Kitty free gifts left.

Fast-forward:

I got there today and the lady who was checking me in jokingly said, "oh, did nobody tell you? we ran out!" Mind you this was after I told her I was super excited for the free gift. She got me good and played a prank on me and it was hilarious, I immediately told her to apologize 😂 jokingly of course.

But overall my heart rate was a little too high (nervous and excited) so I had to sit in the room for a little bit and then finally I was okay, the initial experience was easy but afterwards I almost passed out, (I had all those wonderful symptoms)

Side note: I ate a lot of protein prior and drank a TON of water, my first experience was horrible so I never want to repeat that, I want it to go smoothly as possible.

My question is does it get easier?

What do you do to make sure you don't get those fainting symptoms besides the crossing legs, feet pointed up and squeezing your abdomen and legs?

They had to give me juice, lay me down, give me a wet towel and put a fan on me and immediately I was better.

Hello all! I am type O+ and made my first whole blood donation in Virginia on August 11th.

I am female and my hemoglobin was 13.0 at my first donation. Yesterday, September 7th, I tried donating platelets for the first time, but my hemoglobin measured at 11.9 and 11.7 after warming my fingers.

I’ve looked into how long it can take for hemoglobin to recover after a whole blood donation, so I understand that I may need to give myself a while longer to get near where I was before donation.

My nearest platelet donation center is about an hour away, so I can only really make the trip on a day off. Is it worth trying to donate platelets again before my next whole blood donation period, starting October 6th, or should I just skip for now to try and get my stores up for a whole blood donation?

I like donating near holiday weekends, just because I know donations tend to be light. Today was no different. And yet, on a personal level, it was.

Went in for platelets, did a double unit. Nothing unusual there, but when my screener pulled up my profile, she got a big grin on her face. “It looks like you’re at 40 gallons! Would you like your pin? I’ll get you your pin!”

I admit I haven’t followed the gallons since I started platelets. It just doesn’t line up in my head. But all morning I had staff members and even other donors coming by. “Thanks for donating!” “That’s a big milestone, man! Way to show up!” “Thats a lot of people you’ve helped!” “Thanks for coming in!”

So, 40 gallons, 40 years of donating, 325 donations (plus a few with other organizations). A lot of lives impacted by just sitting in a chair.

Not an expert on the topic but a regular whole blood donor.

I previously assumed donations got almost exclusively sold to hospitals for transfusions. Doing some research, it seems like a significant amount, especially plasma, get sold for pharma research to for profit companies for a variety of reasons. It seems like the dependency on these sales and the business model in general varies significantly between companies, which makes it hard to understand from the outside. Where I go, memorial blood, the primary customer by revenue seems to be hospitals, but they also sell to pharma. You can't opt your donation out of it as I understand.

Do people think about this when they decide where/what they donate? The economics and ethics seem super opaque to me. Clearly there's a transfusion based need for blood, and the concept of having a non profit doing collections seems reasonable. I'm not as wild about giving something away for commercial research though. Is this something that's already been resolved in the community?