#Oh! forgot to mention we actually try to give afab ppl CEK neg blood bc it could impact pregnancies badly if they get antibodies for these

[magnaaurantiaco]

(sorry for rambling i just love talking about blood)

I MEAN i agree with the “no gender on ID” but having blood type is kinda useless and/or dangerous. even if youre a cop or a firefighter (at least here they have nametags with their ABO) if youre bleeding and it CANT wait 40 mins or so youre GONNA get an Oneg, im not about to trust a tag with a test i didnt do myself (its like 15 min to find out someones ABO).

Ive had patients with abo tags and it was wrong twice, ive had pregnant ppl on their third child who just found out they should have gotten RhoGAM bc their first test said they were Opos and just showed the results at the next pregnancies and the drs accepted it as true but when their kid needed an exchange transfusion we found out the person was actually Oneg and that almost killed the kid

the uncertainty makes the transfusion safer, imo

BUT of course, it could point out that the person who drew the blood took it from the wrong person, it could happen specially if there are multiple patients with the same name, or if the nurse isnt affiliated with the bloodbank (at least here our own techs draw the blood, but not all places are the same)

having a blood history would be useful to speed things up if you need like, 4 bags (its not really wise to waste Onegs, so we would send only the first one, maybe two depending on the bleeding), but i trust only other bloodbanks info for that, if i have access, and the following bags do NOT get distributed without the proper tests (to get an Oneg the Dr is aware of the risks of a transfusion without the tests and has to sign a term, they understand the risk but understand that the situation asks for as little time as possible)

tho! it could also be good if the person has a history of conditions like sickle cell anemia, some blood cancers, or if they in a transplant list! these people need Very Special blood and just matching their abo isnt ideal, we have over 40 subgroups of blood, the ABO is a separate (and certainly the deadliest) system we prioritize but if an O donor is a perfect match for a B+ patient theyre FOR SURE getting that O and we are marking that donor to invite to donate in case theyre needed

the one other situation i can think of is if theyre a bombay (hh) phenotype. It happens because the A and B antigens are always connected to a H antigen, but hh people dont have the H (and therefore, dont have A or B, so in OUR tests they would show up as O!) They can only receive from other hh, and theyre very rare depending on where you are >:0 So, in an emergency, if we dont have a history of the patient, we would give them Oneg and that would be very very dangerous, we are literally being misled with our tests bc they dont point out the lack of H. Because theyre so rare, we cant stock up on hh blood :( , so here the rare donors are marked as well and if we know they CANNOT get a transfusion bc of that, we advocate for alternate approaches (a little like JWs) at least until we can get in contact with those donors but other than that they could live their entire lives without knowing they have such a rare bloodtype :0

of course, im talking about my own experience, i work mainly with syckle cell and cancer patients and they regularly need transfusions, hh phenotype is something i never actually met at work, so it WOULD be useful to have these things on an ID as much as it would be to have a tattoo of drugs youre allergic to (the answer is very! very useful)

but yea, much safer to give Oneg at first than to trust a piece of paper. Donate if you can! Each donation can save up to 4 lives and we are so very grateful for our donors!

(also dont be discouraged if youre AB, only other AB can receive your red blood cells but we use the plasma for babies bc you have no A nor B antibodies, how cool is that! (THE ANSWER IS VERY COOL))

Sorry for rambling i just really like blood lol

this started as a joke but then i started actually thinking about it and now im really annoyed that IDs have this one letter that doesnt mean anything for cis people and is a huge pain in the ass for trans people when we could instead have literally lifesaving information so emergency medical services could just check ur wallet to see which blood to give you so you dont die or whatever But No