Let me tell you about my experiences in trying to donate blood in Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. I used to donate quite regularly when I lived in Chicago, but it was always a hassle. I went to Lifesource in Chicago every few months and pretty much had the same experience each time. They would ask me how tall I was and I would say 1.68 meters. This of course led to confusion, because they never knew what to type in on their computers. I never helped, figuring that if they wanted my blood they would be willing to use the Metric System.
Then they wanted to know my mass, and I told them 95 kilograms. Once again confusion, and running around the office took place by staff to find a conversion they could type into their computer. When they took my temperature, I said, "Good, a healthy 37 degrees." Well, of course this happened every time I went to donate blood so I got kind of tired of having to go through this every time I wanted to donate. I even switched to the red blood cell donation program so I only needed to go once every 16 weeks instead of every 8 weeks. But when I moved out of Chicago I pretty much decided it wasn't worth the hassle to donate if I had to argue about the Metric System every time I wanted to donate blood. But last week I decided to try it at the Red Cross in Madison, Wisconsin. Figuring Madison is one of those "progressive" cities, but once again a miserable experience. Giving blood to me is painless, but the difficult part is going through the data entry phase. This time they wanted to know my height, which I gave them in SI units. The really odd part is the intake nurse had my driver's license right in front of her, and it had my height and weight in obsolete units typed right on the top of the license. But evidently this was too difficult for her, so she had to walk around the office and find someone who had a computer that could give her my height in inches and feet. We went through the same thing with my mass (which she called weight) Then after threatening to not let me donate unless I could tell her how heavy I am in pounds, she finally gave up and went out and got a conversion from kilograms to pounds. I think by the time we got to my temperature she stopped saying anything out loud, knowing I would only give her my data in SI units. I did donate over 500 mL of blood. About 473 mL in what they called a "unit" but they also took several also vials of about 5 mL each for various types of testing. I did write the general office of the Red Cross in Washington asking them where could donate blood using SI metric units so I wouldn't have to go through this hassle every time I tried to donate. He said there was a federal regulation. What federal regulation? Mark Henschel
