These Boots….

are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna…

…walk straight into a Blood Donation Session! Well, we have lots of boots, shoes, trainers, flip flops, sandals, pumps…you name it and we’ve seen them, come to a session, but I’ve been taking pics of some of the funky boots over the last few weeks.

Blue boots, red boots, silver boots, anything slightly different and I whipped my camera out. I did have to explain that I didn’t have a foot fetish…really I don’t…I just like funky boots. It gave people a laugh anyway.

Oh boy, we need a laugh, don’t we? With Covid-19 dominating our lives now when I whip out my camera and ask to take a pic of someone’s feet we laugh at the ridiculousness of it. We laugh because if we don’t we think about illness, we think about isolation, we think about money, we think of pasta and we think of toilet rolls.

It is all very surreal, it is frightening and for many it is life changing. Whilst life shuts down across the world and businesses close the Blood Service continues. The NHS continues. We aren’t the only ones still going, of course, but so many people have had to put everything on hold for something so small we can’t even see it with the human eye. This minuscule virus holds mankind in it’s sweaty little palm. Around the world we are self isolating, we walk two metres apart, we don’t visit family, we queue outside supermarkets and we pray we don’t come into contact with the virus.

Donating blood is a legitimate reason for leaving the house. People still need blood whether a virus is raging war on us or not. We still need donors to come to sessions. Lots of donors have said that they expected to get a text saying the session has been closed, but more than ever we need them to attend. People who donate blood should always be healthy so we are all mixing with healthy people. Never the less, processes have been put in place to help everyone be safe and feel safe.

All donors are triaged before they even enter the session. Numbers are restricted in the room. Chairs are all spaced two metres apart. If the room isn’t big enough to accommodate nine beds being spaced two metres apart then the session is restricted to a six bedder. All of this impacts on the flow of a session and so far most people have been very understanding. Sadly, this wasn’t true for one man…he arrived half an hour before the session started and was asked to wait outside as we were still setting up, he would have to be triaged before attending anyway. We have a daily brief and with the ever changing times due to Covid-19 this brief is vital. The brief over ran and he burst into the room angrily stating that we were late and his ‘appointment time’ had now passed. We assured him we would start in a couple of minutes, but he threw his form down and stomped off stating he had better things to do! What he had to do when the whole country was in lockdown I don’t know. Maybe he needed to stock up on more toilet rolls, who knows. I do know that he won’t be donating again as we don’t need to put up with people like that. The first donor of the session told me she had seen him storming off and she was glad because she had tried to stay away from him outside as he hadn’t stopped coughing!

It wasn’t the best start to a day, but then things improved enormously. A lady came to donate and she brought a goody bag for us…it had toilet rolls in, soaps, bath salts and essential oils. They were such lovely treats they brought tears to my eyes. The angry man was a one off, our donors are marvellous people.

On thursday, 26th March the country decided to give the NHS a clap at 8pm. I was working in Failsworth and so I missed it, but our manager phoned up and sent a clap over the airwaves. Later when I saw posts on social media and the news I was tearing up again. Media City lit up all the buildings with blue lights for the NHS too…

So from boots to boosts. Unexpected gifts and clapping, they boost your morale, they help you feel better when you’re stuck indoors. We all need a boost every now and then.