I am your hero

And not only your hero, but a hero in general. Or so the blood central keeps telling me at least. For the first time in 3 years I have been able to donate blood again. First it was trips to far away that prevented me from donating (due to 3-6 month quarantines), and then it was countless number of medicines that stood in my way, but now nothing can stop me! Or not nothing, now of course I have to wait another 4 months, until I can go again.

As most of you probably know, you can describe the oxygen-transmitting capacity of your blood with an Hb value, Hb= hemoglobin, the oxygen carrier of the blood. A normal Hb value is;

for men 140-180 g/L

for women 120-160 g/L

To compensate for the loss you "suffer" from donating 4.5 dL blood, you get iron supplements if you have a low Hb value. Before this limit was sex dependent, but now it has been set to 150 for both men and women. This means, as a woman you almost always get iron supplement after donating blood, which some competitive people might feel like a set back.

This time, as most times, I got iron supplements after donating. I did not see it as a set back though. Maybe it was because I wasn't competitive that exact day, or maybe because I had a Hb-value of 147! This is pretty fucking great for a small woman like me. They often ask me if I eat lots of meat, which obviously provokes me, this rigid thinking of meat=iron. I infom them that I get my iron through beans, and look how good I am doing.

Vegetarian= anemic, my ass!