Blood, Guts, And The Giving Thereof

[zziffle]

What's the drill in Chiang Mai for donating blood? I've been here for a little more than a year now, and it's probably time I started giving back a little with regular red-oil changes.

And how about organ donation? Back in the mild west, we would fill out organ donation authorization forms or cards permitting 'harvesting' should we suddenly be surprised to find ourselves dead. Is there any drill like that here? (I ask as I'm a motorcycle rider, so a potentially good candidate to be an organ farm.) And is there any point in even thinking about this for old farts? I'm sneaking up on 60, and maybe my gizzards are sneaking up on their best-before date - I don't know.

[Loaded]

On the ground floor of the main Sripat Hospital building is an office where you can register and then donate blood.

Not sure about organ donation but if you approach a hospital and offer them your organs make sure they understand that it's after you die.

[elektrified]

On the ground floor of the main Sripat Hospital building is an office where you can register and then donate blood.

Not sure about organ donation but if you approach a hospital and offer them your organs make sure they understand that it's after you die.

[Dante99]

Not sure about organ donation but you can give your body for medical research/teaching then it is returned after about a year for cremation or burial.

[zziffle]

Returned? That's inconvenient. Better if they would just boil up the unused bits and let the soi dogs at it. Or maybe mummify it and stand it in the corner as decoration each Halloween.

[eyecatcher]

On the ground floor of the main Sripat Hospital building is an office where you can register and then donate blood.

Not sure about organ donation but if you approach a hospital and offer them your organs make sure they understand that it's after you die.

also be wary if the nurse says ...."unbuckle"

[Dante99]

Returned? That's inconvenient. Better if they would just boil up the unused bits and let the soi dogs at it. Or maybe mummify it and stand it in the corner as decoration each Halloween.

They will dispose of it if you prefer not to have a burial or cremation, or will assist with burial or cremation usually.

[CMHomeboy78]

Farangs as organ-donors here?

Would it include their brains?

What will the consequences be?

Geriatric Thais walking the streets holding hands with teenage girls?

[DaddyWarbucks]

Pardon me for reviving a thread that was dying a peaceful death.

I've been trying to get some information about it that has been slow in coming.

My wife is a nurse at Maharat Hospital and she tells me that there is indeed a procedure for donating organs. However, the forms to be filled out are all in Thai.

As the hospital is starting to encourage the use of English in a number of ways, the forms involved might be available in English in the foreseeable future. Nobody is sure when. TIT.

CMHomeboy78's [presumabably] facetious reference to brain transplants from farang donors although heavy-handed as humour raises a serious point regarding organ donors and recipients.

Anyone who has lived among Thais for any length of time knows that they are, with few exceptions, very superstitious. Would they be willing to receive the organs of a farang?

Even blood transfusion can be a vexed question.

In the US certain religious sects, notably Jehovah's Witnesses, are strongly opposed to it. Court cases have sought to convict orthodox parents who denied blood transfusions to their ailing children. What their religious, moral or hygenic reasons for refusing it are I don't know. But it wouldn't be hard to imagine similar objections here in Thailand.

All in all I think the whole subject is fraught with problems and is a field strewn with banana-peels and landmines for any farang to walk into.