WTF Harold???

[Thumper]

Lynn and I are both regular blood donors and have been for many years. We donate every other month (the waiting period between donations is 8-weeks).

Well, we're both eligible to donate again as of today, so yesterday we went on-line to make appointments to donate this Saturday. My appointment was confirmed, but Lynn's was "blocked" and said she was listed as a "permanent deferral'! WTF? We had no clue what that meant, so we googled it.

Permanent Deferral

A designation applied to a blood donor who, for one or more of a variety of reasons, will NEVER be allowed to donate blood .... donors to which a permanent deferral is applied are not expected to EVER regain eligibility, even if rules or testing technologies change. Examples of permanent deferrals include donors taking the medication Tegison (etretinate), those with a confirmed positive test for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), and donors with reactive nucleic acid tests for hepatitis C virus or HIV during re-entry testing.

Ummm, TO OUR KNOWLEDGE .... none of those apply! Now she's worried that they've found something she's not aware of. Yesterday morning, we called the blood bank to get a clarification, but due to "high call volume", we had to leave a message. On the message, Lynn mentioned her concern and asked to please be called back asap. It's been 24-hours now and so far, nuttin'! She's going to call back this morning to see if she can find out WTF is going on. Man, we don't know if she needs to make a doctor's appointment, rush to the ER or what. Weird, no explanation whatsoever other than "You are permanently deferred!"

We're in a slight panic here as we have no clue what they found, or if the whole thing is a mistake. If it's a mistake, how TF are we supposed to straighten it out? Pay for a frigging private doctor to check for all of the above so we can continue to DONATE blood? This is really weird. If she tested positive for HIV, she's got some 'splainin' to do! Ha! :hair

[DeputyDog]

That is strange. I thought they were supposed to notify the donor when they test the samples if anything like that is detected.

Hope it just turns out to be a mistake on their part.


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[Thumper]

Well, we wondered the same thing. The last time we donated was the end of October, but never knew a thing about it until we tried to make an appointment yesterday. We just called again and left ANOTHER message that we'd been waiting since yesterday and nobody has returned our call. We got an immediate call back. According to the rep, when we donated in October, she tested positive for Syphilis! But they ran an additional (more sensitive test) and it turned out to be a false positive. So, they've removed the "Permanent Deferral" status from her record and she is again qualified to be a blood donor. BUT ... it takes 7-days for the status to take effect, so she won't be eligible to donate until 01/07. MY appointment is for 01/02, so I'll probably just cancel the whole thing and we'll try again once the dust settles, then go in together. My main question is, if this was all done in October, why didn't they straighten it out then, instead of just leaving it there until we discovered it on our own? Then have to wait until it clears the system when it could (should) have been cleared two frigging months ago? That's just nuts.

[DeputyDog]

All of the documentation that I’ve seen when I’ve donated says that when they do the testing of the donation they will contact the donor if there are any positive tests for disease.

I’d be curious why they didn’t notify her when they got the positive test unless it’s because of the negative second test.

Even so you definitely found a glitch in their system.

Good thing you haven’t been doing the traveling like you used to or you’d have some ‘splainin to do. [emoji16]


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[Thumper]

All of the documentation that I’ve seen when I’ve donated says that when they do the testing of the donation they will contact the donor if there are any positive tests for disease.

I’d be curious why they didn’t notify her when they got the positive test unless it’s because of the negative second test.

Even so you definitely found a glitch in their system.

Good thing you haven’t been doing the traveling like you used to or you’d have some ‘splainin to do.

Yeah, it's crazy. I guess if she really had syphilis, she could have been spreading it all over town for the past few months! I have to assume they'd have notified us if the second test confirmed it. My big question is, why didn't they just remove the Permanent Deferral designation immediately? That's just plain stupid.

Oh, and as for my "travelling" ... SHE'S the only one who tested positive! :toothy

[Thumper]

Well, we checked on-line today and she now shows as eligible to donate. I guess the 7-day delay they told us about was just an estimate. Anyway, we made another appointment for tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) and we'll BOTH donate together ... as we normally do.