Jerome Gave Blood for the First Time at 42. Here’s What He Wishes He’d Known Sooner.

I’ll be honest with you. I was scared. Not of the needle — well, maybe a little of the needle — but mostly I was scared of walking into a room where I didn’t think I was expected. Where nobody looked like me. Where I’d feel like I was doing something that wasn’t really for people like me.

That fear kept me away for twenty years. Twenty years of thinking about it. Twenty years of meaning to. Twenty years of watching the adverts and feeling like the invitation wasn’t quite addressed to me.

What changed? My friend Marcus. He started donating and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. Not in an annoying way — just in the way people talk when something has genuinely moved them. He told me about sickle cell. He told me about the Ro blood type. He told me that Black donors are so rare that hospitals sometimes struggle to find a match for patients who need regular transfusions. He made it specific. He made it ours.

I went with him to a session in Birmingham. The staff were brilliant — professional, warm, genuinely grateful. I was in and out in under an hour. I felt absolutely fine afterwards. I felt, if I’m being completely honest, a little bit heroic. Which is embarrassing to admit, but there it is.

I’ve given blood six times now. I’m O positive, which is useful, and I carry the Ro subtype, which the nurse told me is particularly needed. Every time I go, I think about what took me so long. And I think about how many other people are still in the waiting room of their own hesitation.

If that’s you: come in. You are expected. You are needed. And it will not be what you feared.

— Jerome, 42, Birmingham