Need a Blood Donor? Sorry, Wish I could Help...

The other day I was at work when an e-mail came through announcing that they were urgently seeking volunteers to donate blood. When you work around the military - especially here in San Antonio where we have both Wilford Hall Medical Center and Brooke Army Medical Center - these requests are fairly common.

I'm sure that I had given blood before I joined the military so many years ago, but I distinctly remember in basic training having them load us all up into a bus and taking us to some blood donation center so we could all learn the importance of donating blood, and for those that hadn't done so, doing it for the first time. And of course, for the first few years in the military, I would do my duty and donate (gladly, by the way) on a routine basis.

That all changed when they invented Mad Cow Disease.

My first overseas assignment was to England, and my next overseas assignment was to Italy. I guess based on the years that I was in both places, at the particular times I was there (All during the 1980's), I was branded (pun intended) as non-eligible to donate.

So the other day when I got this e-mail, I got the name of the point of contact and fired off an e-mail back to her. I gave the specific dates of my time overseas and asked that surely, after 20 years, I was safe to begin donating blood again, right?

The response I got back was a polite, "thanks for trying", but unfortunately, I still can't donate. Oh, and that includes my wife and kids who were with me in Italy.

Don't you think by now, after this much time, someone would come up with a test that could scan my blood and verify that I don't have Mad Cow? More importantly, should I be worried so long after the fact that I might just in fact be developing Mad Cow. I don't know the exact symptoms, but I have put on a little weight this year.

Moo.