I knew a guy in the Air Force who scalded his tongue on a slice of pizza. The base clinic wanted to treat it as a venereal disease. You can imagine the kind of sympathy he got from his peers.
I know it’s cruel, but all these years later I still crack up when I recall him try to say “I don’t have syphilis” with cotton wrapped around his tongue.
Are the rules different for plasma than they are for whole blood? Gay men have to have been abstinant for a year before they can give blood. Or they have to give blood outside the US, since most other developed countries have more relaxed rules on this issue.
No, as I understand they are the same. Right now I could not donate plasma - and for what it's worth, in reply to another poster who will remain unnamed, the plasma center calls your plasma a "donation" - this is where I took this word from - anyway, right now I could not donate plasma without lying. I'm not going to lie to donate plasma, not going to happen. I rebuke any efforts whatsoever at shaming me for who I am. Rob
Sorry if I came across as shaming. That wasn't my intent. I just wanted to make sure you had looked into the rules and wouldn't be put in an awkward situation at the donation center. I myself only became aware of the rule a few years ago when SO had undiagnosed leukemia for 2 1/2 years and during that time they were treating his main symptom, loss of red blood cells, with transfusions of one unit of blood per week on average. I wanted to donate blood and was surprised to learn that I couldn't for the same reason.
I remember about 10-12 years ago one of my close friends mentioned he was killing time in a place that happened to have a blood center and he went in thinking he could donate blood. He is a gay man so he could not donate and he was pretty surprised and hurt by that.
I think, without looking it up for sure, there has been a relaxation of rules of the gay thing and it is as you say now —if a gay man has been abstaining for a year They CAN give blood. I’m pretty sure it used to be that if you ever had one gay encounter you could not give blood ever. At any time. Never. Ever.
When I go to donate at either of the two blood banks in town, one of the questions centers on gay encounters and uses "ever; forever ever" terms rather than asking if it's been at least one year since the last encounter. Maybe blood banks are different, but that question has remained the same in my questionnaires for years.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
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