Beware of the dentist!

This evening I had planned to do "something amazing" with my wife!

That's right...we both set out to donate blood.

Whilst, "her indoors" was about to donate her 50th pint, I have not managed to donate more than 15 or so, and had apparently not donated since 2004!

Consequently, I had to have a 1:1 interview with a nurse - which simply meant that she read out all the questions that I had previously answered on the standard questionaire, and I had to repeat the answers out loud that I had previously written.

I'm not sure whether or not this is an attempt to catch fraudulent donors out, but it seemed quite a simple task to complete successfully, for all but the cerebally challenged (Don't they know I have an IQ of 134?)

Just to make the questioning interesting, when asked whether or not I had ever had sex with a man, (or with a woman who had had sex with a man, who had had sex with a man etc) I paused...muttered the name Gavin, paused again, before saying quite hesitantly, "er No..."

However, even this response didn't seem to phase the nurse who proceeded with the questioning.

I had also proudly, ticked the "yes" box against the question, "Have you visited a doctor or dentist in the last 24 hours?", as I had gone to see Dr Khourami, my Polish dentist, earlier that day.

The nurse looked perturbed, even when I said that it had only been for a check up, and that I had only had a "clean & polish".

"...Unfortunately, you can't give blood..." she said, ...because apparently the 'clean and polish, releases a lot of bacteria, which gets into the blood stream... and basically "pollutes" the blood.

If that means that the blood is too "polluted" to give to somebody who would otherwise die without it, I don't feel too crazy about keeping it in my own body, or for having had this allegedly beneficial dentistry treatment.
Next time I shall decline such health treatment...on health grounds!