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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • In the US, it is an Individual Donor Assessment and applies to everyone. Everyone gets the same question tree, regardless of sexual orientation. If you have had a new partner in the last 3 months or have multiple partners that doesn’t defer you, it sends you to the next tier of question: have you engaged in anal sex. Yes to anal with a new partner or multiple partners is the deferral. If you haven’t had a new partner or multiple partners in the last 3 months, you will not be asked about anal sex. Canada went live with their individual donor assessment a year before the US and has noted a slight drop in donations in straight donors because they are now being deferred for high risk activity when they were previously missed.

    Prep is listed under a medication deferral. First responders that take prep for protection from workplace exposure are deferred as well.

    (I’m a blood banker)


  • This overlooks that 100% cotton jeans will break down when they are discarded (unlike polyester and nylon). A good pair of jeans can be mended and worn for many years instead of a new pair every year. Jeans can lead a very useful “after life” as insulation or be recycled into new fabric.

    It also ignores the chemicals and energy required to turn beechwood and bamboo into wearable fabric.

    I don’t know what the solution is but natural fabrics aren’t the enemy.










  • The first part is what my husband tells me.

    I do recognize that Medical Laboratory Scientists are a very superstitious lot especially funny since our degree and certification include Scientist. Don’t say it’s slow or quiet because it’s getting to get stupid busy (and everyone will blame you). Don’t run quality control more than required because you are tempting failure and will have to do a look back of all the testing to make sure it was accurate. We jokingly put an elf on the shelf out that had FDA written on the hat and the FDA showed up for an unannounced inspection a week later. I’m a Lead and every time I bring my Lead work to the bench with me, we get so busy with patient samples and orders that I can’t touch it. All are definitely confirmation bias situations.





  • I work in a hospital. I continued to commute to work and do my job through all of the shortages and all of the uncertainty. I died a little each day I had to stop my then 3.5yo twins from rushing to hug me at the door so I could change, drop my clothes in the wash, and wash my hands before they touched me. Then they stopped trying. It was a year before I was greeted at the door with a hug. I knelt there crying the first time they did it again.

    I saw all my friends doing all the lock down things and knew that society and employers would never make it up to those of us who worked through it all. We didn’t even get pizza parties because my hospital had a no shared food policy for infection prevention.

    I walked past maskless protestors outside my hospital accusing of us every ludicrous talking point there was. For the first time in my career I questioned why I did it. Why was I risking my family’s health and my own to take care of THEM.

    Yes… #blessed