I try to do platelets and definitely would not hit the mark for “frequent donor” if we just count platelets. My post-platelet-donation bruises tend to last pretty long and I like to wait for them to go away before I try to donate again. But sometimes I don’t have much time to donate, which means I do a whole blood donation instead of platelets. I usually end up doing at least 3 whole blood donations per year because of this, which lands me straight in the “frequent donor” bracket, which for anyone reading, gets suggested to take an iron supplement by the Red Cross.

However, if you are a frequent donor, iron rich foods in your diet may not be enough to replenish the iron you routinely lose through blood donations.

The Red Cross recommends that you consult with your health-care provider to see if taking an iron supplement is right for you. We recommend taking a multivitamin with 18 mg of iron or an iron supplement with 18-38 mg of elemental iron for 60 days after each blood donation, for 120 days after each power red donation or after frequent platelet donations.

Quoted from this Red Cross page. This link also tells you exactly who falls in the “frequent donor” bracket. It varies with gender and, if you are a woman, age.

If you fall into one of these groups, you should consider yourself a frequent donor:

• Women under the age of 50 who have donated two or more units of red blood cells or made 10 or more platelet donations in the past year
• Women ages 50 and older who have donated three or more units of red blood cells or made 15 or more platelet donations in the past year
• Men who have donated three or more units of red blood cells or made 15 or more platelet donations in the past year

Your body, your choice. But I’m not really sure how the administration being awful means you don’t want to donate, unless you are worried of grievous bodily harm being done to you and then you would want all your blood.

Where did you try to donate that banned you? At least on the American Red Cross site it seems transgender and nonbinary individuals are not banned from donating on the basis of their non-cisgender identity, but I know not everyone is American and perhaps some donor centers even in America might be more bigoted about things. I am sorry you experienced this.

For blood, since I have one arm free I just do whatever on my phone. Sometimes interacting with the Threadiverse, sometimes reading articles, sometimes texting people…

If I am doing platelets, both my arms are hooked up and I can’t move them, so I’m stuck with watching stuff on the TV screen. It’s really cool they have those at all, though—better than staring at the wall! I usually pop on some documentary, which is… very much ignoring my list of movies and TV shows I might like to see some day. Oops.

I’m really sorry this is happening!

It seems some people with the same issue managed to at least get a message saying they’ll get off the list after filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau online here. You’ll probably want to search for the one in your state and city. If you already did this and it still didn’t work, sorry in advance.

There are seemingly fewer resources on MSM deferrals and bans than on the Reddit guide because when I tried to follow the links, they were all dead for me. I looked into replacing each dead link:

• Blood is Blood, dead link: https://bloodisblood.org/. Looked into it, seems to be for action in the United States of America and no longer seems active. (I looked up "blood is blood" activism if you want to look yourself—after all, I could have missed something! Helped me avoid irrelevant results like stuff about the horror film of the same name.)
• GLAAD’s Ban the Ban, dead link: https://www.glaad.org/amp/ban-ban-argument-against-12-month-blood-donation-deferral-men-who-have-sex-men.
• ADVANCE Study with the FDA, dead link: https://advancestudy.org/ Since that link is broken, you might want to look here instead. They have a useful link to the study here. Found another summary of the study here.

As far as I know, I need to look more later (need to go do something right now), activism over blood donation restrictions in the United States of America seems to have died down in accordance with the changes: “If monogamous and no new partners in the last three months, all prospective donors, including gay and bi men, would be considered eligible to donate with no deferral period.” Not too sure about other countries, but the dead links I was looking to replace were focused on the United States of America. If you have any information about activism for this in countries outside of the United States of America, let me know!

I was thinking a flat-out link to this post. I am aware it might cause some issues with not being taken to the post on a user’s instance but on someone else’s. I saw someone use some website to get around that issue, click the link to go to the website and then choose to see it on your instance or the original or something like that, but sadly I don’t remember the website. I’ll go looking for it.

Typing all this to you because I don’t have sidebar alteration powers on Mbin :( Do you want me to stay on Mbin to test Mbin/Lemmy moderation troubles, or should I make an account on this instance, or both?

(I do happen to have Moderate options for posts and comments though.)