Daily Activity Report

[enismirdal]

Insult of the day: "You're just a horrible little lesbionic gargoyle." (My brother to me.)
Quote of the day: "You're odd in a negative harmless...harmless way; I'm odd in a positive, violent, dangerous way." (See above)

Drosophila Update: 2 still alive, both male (doh!)
Frogspawn update: not yet hatched.
Guinea pig update: they seem to remember me a bit now. Flower needs a bath. Sprouts still has that lump, even though my mum said it had gone down. Seems very perky though. They got to play in the garden this afternoon - yay!

I have a feeling the blood donor people might call me up a couple of weeks early this time around, cos they're about to lose all those donors - 52, 000 people - who might, possibly, remotely have CJD. Which is a lot of blood. So they're going to need the rest of us more. I wonder if they'll be able to import extra blood from the US or something?

Day otherwise completely dull. I've booked myself in for a dental checkup at the end of March.

I'd almost forgotten what a TV was. Now I'm slowly remembering. I watched the Fimbles beginning to end today. Whilst making sarcastic, innuendo-laden comments to the screen. The black box shall rule my mind once more. Mother Internet, save me!!

Comments

[gyre.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't St. Patty's Day (or maybe it doesn't matter?) I'd say we should meet up in a pub or restaurant somewhere this evening.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Why does St Patrick's Day make it any different? Is it the risk of ending up in a pub full of overexcited Irish people...?

Who else is available this evening? It sounds like a great plan to me!!

[gyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... overcrowded crazy drunk people being the concern.

I'm still at work so I have not been on IM or anything to see who else is around/available/whatever.

I just feel sociable tonight.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I do wonder sometimes how the blood service has any donors at all... (cue predictable gay / blood doning rant)

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there is that. I give blood because I can, cos I know it could save someone's life, and cos they give me free coffee and biscuits. But I think they need to reassess their policy on gay men and blood donating. Although I'd need the figures before I could put forward a firm opinion :S

[i-eat-bibles.livejournal.com]

Cant gay men give blood?
And everyone should give blood because at the end of the day it WILL save someones life and i'm guessing if ever you were in a situation in which you require blood you would be thanking your God (or what ever you believe in) that people do give blood.Life is priceless and if you can save it do so.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

You can't give blood if "you are a man who has ever had oral or anal sex with another man" (I believe that's the wording they use - i.e. you can donate if you're gay, but only if you're virginal and gay). Or if you're a woman who's had sex with one of the above in the last 12 months. It's a precaution against HIV, of course, but it does mean that:

If you are a gay man
* that has sex with other men
* has always used condoms
* has recently tested HIV negative
* that is in a monogamous relationship with another HIV negative man
* that has not had sex with anyone else within the window period

you cannot give blood.

If you are a straight man
* that has sex with many different women
* that never uses condoms
* that has never had an HIV test

you can give blood.

Which is obviously discriminating. Although I would not want someone I loved to receive blood that may have HIV in, I think at this point, acting as if all gay men have HIV is just downright unfair, because the huge overwhelming majority don't.

(Also you can't give blood if you've ever had sex in exchange for money/drugs, injected drugs (even bodybuilding steriods), etc. etc.)

[i-eat-bibles.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that it would be easier to get HIV off someone of the opposite sex than off someone of the same sex.
And what about women who have had oral sex with another woman?
This sounds very archaic and descriminatory. Many gay men have one partner for large extended periods of time and many straight men are the whores.
I would have thought that what the blood people do is test all incoming blood for things such a HIV then anyone can give blood and they merely reject it if it contains anything-it would also serve as a way of people checking if they have any blood diseases.
I still think people should give blood as it does save lives.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Women going down on each other is supposed to be reasonably safe (barring getting genital warts if your partner has a cold sore, etc.)

You're right - it is archaic. It's cos HIV was first found in the gay community. I don't know if a higher percentage of gay men than straight men still have HIV. But at one time this was the case. And there's more chance of HIV spreading among gay men cos anal sex has a higher chance of making lesions than vaginal sex. But with condoms used properly, that shouldn't be a huge issue.

The risk is that HIV blood tests sometimes turn up false negatives. It's a risk they can't always afford to take when doing blood transfusions, especially to say, a baby. They test blood routinely for a whole library of diseases anyway, but the more blood they have to reject, the bigger the chance they fail to reject some that carries a disease.

And yes, people who can give blood definitely should :)

[girlofthemirror.livejournal.com]

Your lesbionic! Do you think he will ever get bored of that? I think everyone thinks that the giving blood thing is silly. I thought CJD couldn't be carried in the blod. Otherwise rare steak would give you it. They always said it was just meat on the bone... I do wonder though if they just said that because they couldn't survive if no one ate any at al. Like milk as well... why o earth wouldn't it get into the milk?

*mwah* lovely to talk to you yesterday.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...as I recall, CJD is prion-based, i.e. it's based on proteiny things (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here!). Perhaps if it's in ingested blood it somehow gets broken down first? I don't think they really understand it. But there've been some confirmed cases lately of people getting CJD after receiving a blood transfusion from people who turned out to be infected.

I know they've always asked me if I have 2 or more family members who've had CJD - it makes it sound practically epidemic the way they phrase it; it's small wonder the French freaked and banned British beef.

Lovely to talk to you too, sweetie. Bradley is a darling, but I still miss you lots (sorry Bradders - you're great, but you're just not my Girly!). (And Keli's told me off for calling you Girly.)