I discovered the other day that I can no longer be a blood doner in Japan because I spent more than ONE DAY in either Britain, or France, in between 1987 to 1999. And why am I, a universal donor (almost), not allowed to help people who need some fresh blood? Because the risk that the recepient may contract the new varient of CJD, often linked to consumption of BSE (aka. Mad Cow Disease) afflicted animals. It doesn't matter that I was a vegitarian at that time, nor the fact that I am lactose intolerant, I am simply not allowed to donate blood "just in case. The risk is too high..."
Well today I would like to point out to both the Ministry of Wealth Thru Slave Labour, and Cuts in Healthcare, and the Ministry of "Everything is Foreign to Me" Affairs that tomorrow I am taking the biggest risk I have taken in my entire life, and whatever the outcome I am going to hack into your site and post a huge message saying:"I Did It My Way!"
Let me take a few steps back -- maybe a couple of months -- to tell you my story. I met someone online; this online meeting was not your average online dating where you put profiles up of yourself, pictures, hobbies, likes, dislikes, "looking for a longterm relationship. Email with photos pls." This was even stranger because I was approached by someone who liked my Blog. He had never met me, and yet he was drawn to someone who had openly admitted that they were bulimic, that they have feelings of wanting to fall in love, that they get angry about human rights abuses, that they were just writing because they liked to write.
It is not everyday that you meet a person who sees your heart before your face; in most cases whether you meet someone at a bar, at a booksigning event, or even at a friend's party the first piece of information that you have about another person is what they look like, not how they view life. All my ex's have been the former type -- I know what they look like, then I find out what makes them laugh.
Imagine being blind, and the only information that you have of another person is how they sound, what they are saying, how they smell, and how smooth their skin is; I have even less than that. For the past 2 months I have had romantic feelings about a man who lives 12hours away; we are like the sun and the moon, when I am up, he is asleep, and when he wakes, I am tucked away in bed. What little time we have we spend chatting with our webcams, and that is pretty much it; but this is the last day that I will be resorting to playing catch up, for I will board a plane tomorrow afternoon to see this person who has been part of my life for the past 2 months. Tomorrow I am making that leap....
Today there is a shortage of blood in Japan. My blood type, O positive, makes me pretty much a universal doner. I usually give blood once every 6 months, because I know that somewhere someone needs blood, my blood, to survive. The risk of me, an ex-vegitarian, being a nCJD carrier is slight; why don't they make that leap to find out if I can continue to donate blood, just as I am making that great leap to travel to see the man in my dreams.
Sometimes you have to face fear and believe in yourself to make changes to your life.
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See the risk that I'm gonna CJD should be huge, since I deliberately ate meat during the crisis, and beef in particular.
What? I was a student and it was cheap, and only about twenty people have contracted CJD, fifteen or so of whom live within a few hundred metres of pesticide factories. A little health scare isn't gonna put me off, particularly one which was mainly driven by anti-British market pressures.
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