Selling? Or 'Giving while acquiring compensation'?

     Donating plasma. Am I really here to save lives and do good in the world or just undergo this rigorous process and jamming a 17 gauge needle into my arm for the compensation? Every time I come here, I ask myself that question. I’m still not sure if I have an answer. I like knowing that I am helping some soul with an auto-immune disease, but when I am financially stable, I find that I do not donate plasma nearly as often. 

     The problem I face is that you can only donate blood every 8 weeks and I know that one pint can save up to three lives, but the same goes with plasma. I feel like I get to help more people since I can donate twice a week. You can’t donate plasma if you have donated blood in the past 8 weeks so these processes can’t be done simultaneously, unfortunately. 

     So, I have to make the decision…donate blood every 8 weeks and save three lives or donate plasma twice a week and help save lives and get paid. The compensation factor is the selling point for most poor college students. To those without jobs, booze money has to be made somehow. 

     I suppose though, if I had a rare blood type or was a universal donor, I would choose to donate blood instead of plasma. I am A-, which isn’t very rare and I am not the blood type the drives are meticulously hunting for, but if I were to be more beneficial to the world for me to donate blood over plasma, you bet your buttons I would do it. 

     The quote by Gandhi that I have seen many of times before has always resonated within me and I saw it again today during my hour of facebook stalking. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” —Mahatma Gandhi. Every time I think about this, I think of the things I can do to help. In some cases, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and China, I wish there is more that I could do than just to donate a few dollars. The best I feel I can do on a regular basis is donate blood or plasma. This summer I found a cause to support more suitable to my area of study. I was able to put more of my time and effort into this project to raise a substantial amount of money for Cheetah Conservation Botswana… and I will talk more about what I did with that and why it is such an amazing organization in my next post.

     So all of you people- Go donate. Blood or plasma, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s one of them, because if it’s neither, then that’s one (or three) less lives being saved.