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We have the blood bus come by our office twice a year and we can go and donate. So, there was a big long line, plus a bunch of other people filling out paperwork inside the bus, plus the people actually giving blood. I went back in that little room where they ask you the embarassing questions (I guess they are only embarrassing if you have the wrong answer!) and I OF COURSE answered them all correctly. They took my blood pressure and it was too high to give blood. So the 'nurse' opens the door and yells to the front of the bus to another 'nurse' that she "really needed her to come down here, we're having a problem", which of course caused an immediate silence and got everbody's attention. So another 'nurse' comes into the room and takes my BP and it's too high, so she says I can't give any blood. I tried to convince her that it seemed rational that letting some of the blood out would relieve the high BP, but to no avail.

You can only imagine how hard it was to walk out of that bus with everybody staring and thinking that I had answered one of THOSE questions wrong?

So another 'nurse' comes into the room and takes my BP and it's too high, so she says I can't give any blood.

I was denied the opportunity to give blood for the same reason, but not in such a public way as you were.... It's good that you tried, though.

Because of the ever-proliferating number of questions-about-your-past that exclude donors ("In the last twenty years, have you set foot, even once, in a plague-infested country like Chad, Burma or England?"), I'm one of the three or so people left in the Western Hemisphere who can still give blood. They're draining me dry. I get pleading calls in the middle of the night. Will someone else please donate while I still have vital body fluids?

You can only imagine how hard it was to walk out of that bus with everybody staring and thinking that I had answered one of THOSE questions wrong?

Oh, relax. They probably just thought you'd fainted.