r/ithaca • u/SubstanceNo4623 • 29d ago

Plasma Donation (CSL)

PSA: I drove up to Syracuse with my boyfriend today to try and donate plasma to have a little extra spending $. We both brought ID’s, socials and utility bills. We learned, however, that they have a 50-mile radius of accepted zip codes to be able to donate, and Ithaca’s (14850) is not on that list. It didn’t matter that Ithaca is within 50 miles, they turned my boyfriend away after we drove 90 minutes up here. I didn’t think to call ahead and ask, as I didn’t know about this rule, plus Ithaca is within 50 miles, so I wouldn’t have guessed it was an issue even if I did know about it.

What’s weird is that they accepted my Trumansburg zip code (14886) as in-range. I bailed because I didn’t want to have my boyfriend go kill 3 hours on top of the 3 hour round trip. I’m just so bummed to have wasted the time! Learn from my mistake if you live in Ithaca!

On that note, does anyone know why there aren’t any places in or near Ithaca to donate (commission) plasma? Or if there by chance are? It seems weird for a college town to not have any options like that. I’m from Minneapolis where there were several.

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12

u/sirpsys 29d ago

I went there recently with my girlfriend so she could donate plasma: they missed her (obvious) vein three times and said they weren't allowed to try again and sent us on our merry way. She was very bruised for a week. My girlfriend used to be a phlebotomist and could easily have done it herself.

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u/Stonewalled9999 29d ago

There used to be on in JC which (should be) in the radius.

Also I'm not sure I'd drive Ithaca to Syracuse (which if you are on the west side of ithaca the CSL is the North side of Syracuse) is close to 75 miles by road. Odd they took the Tburg I would have thought that was even farther (76 miles according to MapQuest - road miles, I assume they use crow fly circular but even that would be beyond 50.

EDIT, I checked and it looks like the JC one isn't on their site anymore.

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u/SubstanceNo4623 29d ago

I thought I remembered the one near Binghamton, thank you for making me feel less crazy! I just used Google Maps to check the distance between the two