I'm highly red/green colorblind. I got a pair of these as a gift and they allow me to differentiate between reds/greens much more clearly and to see red where I wouldn't notice without them. I know for some people they don't do much, but it makes hikes and such much more colorful for me!
I donated stem cells to a stranger with a blood cancer in 2016 and reading this article reminded me of how thankful I am to have been able to do that.
It's funny how similar the author's initial situation was to mine - I was caught up in life, just accepted a new job, was getting married in a few months, and I get this call from an organization letting me know I was a bone marrow match for a patient. I totally forgot I registered years earlier after a blood drive in college and thought it was a scam, but eventually remembered signing up.
I'm irrationally afraid of anesthesia so when I found out that stem cell donation for adult patients is done through apheresis I was ecstatic and ready to go. There is a lot of process to go through before being confirmed as a match, a lot of doctor visits and blood work. When it was determined I was a good match for the patient, they scheduled the filgrastim injections and the donation day.
Filgrastim messed me up a bit. I had a lot of bone pain and headaches for a few days and the blood work before and after injections showed an ~8x increase in my white blood cell count (which is the goal - the stuff definitely works). My donation experience was much easier than the author's, I was on the apheresis machine for about 3.5 hours and was finished in one session.
The following year I hosted a donor registration drive at my place of work and helped 100 or so people sign up. I don't know if any of them ever matched with anybody - the chances of matching are really slim. It's super critical to register a large number of people to try to improve matching donors with patients.
Donating is probably the most significant thing I've done for another person, yet one of the simplest things for me. The doctors and organization are apologetic for all the inconvenience to me, but they're helping me save somebody's life and I get a full physical workup out of it. The pre-donation blood work and doctor visits were like the most comprehensive health check up I've ever had and it was all free.
I got a letter from my patient a few months after the donation. I cherish that experience and would do it again in a heartbeat. I never got to meet my patient, as some donors do. I hope they're still doing well.
I just learned that I can make ten potatoes in about twenty minutes in my pressure cooker which has been a huge help for meal prepping. It's so great for so many things!
That's a shame. I recently moved to Toronto and got Beanfield mostly by chance. I'm really pleased with the service, hope to stick with them for a long time.
