Yesterday, I gave blood for the 1^st time in over 30 years, having been thrown into anaphylactic shock and sent by ambulance to Mass General Hospital emergency room in Boston after donating white cells to a very sick newborn baby in Cambridge. In those days they used a centrifuge to spin out the white cells and the remaining blood was sent back into the donor’s bloodstream. Turns out there’d been a hairline crack in the centrifuge and when the serum was returned to my body, it was filled with lethal bacteria. I vowed never again to give blood. Though they no longer use that procedure, any thought of ‘doning’ terrified me. But when Michelle Obama wrote and asked for service in honor of MLK, it was the tipping point for me. And since I already belonged to an Obama group, I looked for what other options she suggested. Donating blood was one of them and by golly, I did it! Now I’ll do it routinely. Better than that, every person I later told about it has donated blood too! How about you? 

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