Blame Mad Cow Disease.
I was 22 years old when I moved to England in 1988 and little did I know that because of the 3 years I would spend there, I would never be able to donate blood in my lifetime.
I’m not sure if I ever gave blood in the few years I would have been eligible to do so prior to the “Mad Cow” prohibition. I think I might have. But I had a lot of needles in my veins over 14 childbearing years with persistent gestational diabetes and the subsequent “pre”-diabetes. I may just be remembering those many, many vials of blood.
The first memory I have of problems donating blood was in 1999. They asked me if I’d ever been to England and I said yes, so they asked me to “come back later.” They weren’t sure when would be a good time. They did say it had something to do with mad cow disease, which didn’t freak me out at the time as much as I think it should have. I was young then and felt indestructible, of course.
The next memory I have is from 2002, soon after I had my daughter, Zoe, at a blood drive in San Antonio, Texas for my employer. They gave me a questionnaire to fill out and one of the questions it asked was if I had lived in the UK between 1980-1996. (Later the questionnaires would narrow it to having lived 6 months or longer in the UK.) My answer was yes - right in the thick of that - 1988-1991. And so I was told definitively that I was not allowed to donate because of the risk of mad cow disease.
I tried to donate a few times after that over the years, but the answer has never changed. Once I was touring a blood bank as part of a leadership group and they said I’d probably never be able to donate blood because the restrictions were permanent.
Of course I’ve researched this mad cow disease, but I have to say that I’ve ever really been alarmed. My oldest child has researched too, as she is also prohibited. I remember her telling me once that we will probably both (and her dad) die of mad cow dementia, because the effects take a long time to manifest. But she also, doesn’t seem too worried. 232 people have died of it, since 1980. Is that that bad? 🧐
We didn’t eat a lot of British beef while we lived in England. Not because we were worried about Mad Cow Disease, although I do remember reading about it at the time. People were a little freaked out, not because of its effect on people though, but because of all the horrible sad cow deaths. Poor cows. That’s all that story was at the time, at least from what I remember. Otherwise I’d have had a better reason to refuse to eat at Wimpy’s Burgers when we were traveling than that it was kind of gross (but then there really wasn’t much choice).
England isn’t known for great cuisine. We bought nearly all of our food from the military base commissary. We ate “on the economy” mostly when traveling or on a night out to the local pub. I totally fell in love with Indian food over those 3 years in England. Just delicious. If I ever go back to visit, I hope the Swaffham Tandoori place is still open. I’d order all my favorites at once. But only the chicken dishes.
I remember being kind of grossed out by most English food, especially pub food that sat out for hours, or even days, in display cabinets. Spotted duck and toad in the hole and all those meat pies and puddings. Ew. I did like some Shepard’s pie and scotch eggs, which can be pretty yummy. I have a very vivid memory of picking someone up at the back door of a pub once or twice and seeing a cat drinking from a pot of stew on the stove. Not to mention we had a friend who sold deer road kill to the pub and I just couldn’t handle the thought of being served that for dinner. Also, the bar top was always covered in beer soaked yeasty smelling towels that probably rarely got a wash. A bacteria smorgasbord. Not that that stopped anyone from having a pint. Including myself. But, as it turns out, it wasn’t the hepatitis infested pubs that turned out to be the danger for us. It was the farmland’s grassy fields of cows. Mad cows. It will be pretty ironic if I end up dying from eating food I didn’t even like or want to eat in the first place.
During the COVID pandemic, we heard that certain restrictions on mad cow disease prohibitions for donating blood were being lifted due to increased need for blood, but whatever those loosened restrictions were, they were not the one(s) that prevent me, and my oldest daughter, Ariel who spent most of her first three years in England, or my ex husband and all of our friends from those days, from donating blood. We still cannot.
Here is what our research shows about the disease: "It can take up to 50 years for an infected person to show symptoms. There are suspected links between Alzheimer's and mad cow disease. Its long incubation period is called a silent period of infection. It damages the central nervous system silently and progressively over time for years until it kills you.
😳
Once a cow starts to show symptoms, it gets sicker and sicker until it dies, usually within two weeks to six months. There is no treatment and no vaccine to prevent it.
As of 2019, 232 people worldwide are known to have become sick with this disease, and unfortunately, they all have died. It’s 100% fatal.
It is thought that they got the disease from eating food made from cows sick with BSE. Most of the people who have become sick lived in the United Kingdom at some point in their lives. Only four lived in the U.S., and most likely, these four people became infected when they were living or traveling overseas.”
I’m writing this because I was recently tagged in social media in a post urging me to donate blood due to shortage. “But, I can’t,” I thought for the hundredth time. And was inspired to tell the story of the why. Maybe one day the restriction will be lifted.
Or maybe I’m on my way to dying a slow, painful death of brain and spinal cord deterioration. I guess it’s a good thing I can’t pass that on.
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| A beautiful river that ran by our house in England. There were no cows. |
