‘Your body produces 200 billion red blood cells each day, you don’t need all of them’: UCL student shares her experience of donating blood during pandemic
Rachel Szpara is a doctoral student at UCL, specialising in organic chemistry research. In July, she became a regular blood donor – an occupation which she sees not only as a way to help people during the pandemic, but also as a mean of satisfying her own scientific curiosity.
Source: NHS Blood and Transplant
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During the last holiday season, few could have anticipated that the world would look like this by the end of 2020. As a previously unimaginable health crisis spread across the globe, it uprooted familiar ways of life, filling old routines with new habits that have quickly become second nature to many UCL students – wearing face masks, watching lectures on Zoom, spending evenings at home. For some, new habits arose out of a desire to help – to balance against increased levels of hardship brought by the pandemic. The latter is what motivated Rachel Szpara, a postgraduate UCL chemist, who chose to become a regular blood donor amidst fears that Covid-19 restrictions would make it more difficult for blood centres to maintain the needed supply of donations.
So far, Rachel has made two donations – one every 16 weeks, which is the frequency advised for female donors according to the Give Blood guidance. She recalls her first appointment as a surreal experience: “I rushed my face mask on and entered a town hall which I can only describe as an assembly hall from school days, with dark wooden floors and high, beamed ceilings.” Upon entering, she was faced with a queue of donors sitting at a distance from each other, chugging water; hydration is imperative for a smooth recovery of blood volume levels after donation, and so all donors are asked to drink 500ml of water immediately before giving blood. When her turn came, Rachel was accompanied to her chair and handed a rubber ball to squeeze.
While not a particularly anxious person, she recognises that Covid-19 restrictions have made the appointment more unnerving than it would have otherwise been: “Behind the masks, you don’t get the comforting smile [from a nurse] that you might expect on your first time giving blood.” Yet, she found it helpful to share her lack of experience with the attendant, who immediately proceeded to explain each step of the procedure. “There was huge comfort in the knowledge of the process,” Rachel explains, “before I knew it, my feet were bopping along to the ABBA playing in the background and my trusty heart was steadily beating. All the fear had gone. I had a smiling attendant reassuring me along the way.”
Once the procedure was over, a man came up to Rachel’s chair, flipped it first upright and then backwards until her head was almost touching the ground – “a shocking and helpful way to bring you around.” She likens the sensation to that of standing up too quickly. After enjoying her orange Club bar, she left the donation centre, feeling proud to have possibly helped someone in need: “The process was over just as quickly as Dancing Queen had begun.”
Rachel seems to be surrounded by likeminded donors – her housemate, colleagues at work and boyfriend all share the same experience of regularly giving blood. “My first donation was brought about by hearing that my boyfriend had started giving blood. I felt proud of him for doing so, it being a selfless act,” she recalls. “It reminded me that when my dad was healthy (now being disabled and unable to) he gave blood regularly for many years, for no reason other than the fact he wanted to help people who needed it.” She adds that aside from the altruistic motivations which drive her desire to donate, there is also a scientific curiosity – she wanted to know more about the procedure itself, as well as about her own blood type.
By her second appointment, which took place on Remembrance Sunday, Rachel’s familiarity with the process erased any worries she may have had the first time around. Donating became a routine, like an average blood test, to the extent that she was more preoccupied with watching the poppy ceremony steamed on TV than with the procedure itself. She arrived at the centre shortly before 11 a.m. and had her blood tested for sufficient iron levels prior to the donation, after which both Rachel and her nurse participated in the two-minute silence. “It all made the process feel so much more human,” she recalls.
Rachel’s next appointment is not until March, and there is no doubt that she will keep returning to the donation centre time and time again in the future. “There’s an unexplainable feeling of good that comes after, like you’ve done something kind,” she says, mentioning that the procedure itself is much quicker than one might think.
Among the multitude of new habits that she had acquired in 2020, one can only hope that some, like face masks and Zoom meetings, will fade into the past eventually. Donating blood, however, will likely remain a part of Rachel’s routine for a long time, and this, if anything, is a good thing that came out of this year. She concludes: “Your body produces 200 billion red blood cells each day; you don’t need all of them, but someone else might.”
UCL students near campus can book an appointment at the Bloomsbury Donor Centre.