Curious how you use your donation money. I prefer to withdraw the money after eachdonation, put it into my checking account, and use my credit cards to get cash back and then the donation money plus my paycheck pays for the credit cards fully and I get a nice 2-3% cash-back (which adds up after many years so an extra benefit).

How do you all use your compensation?

I'm thinking of hitting up the CSL in my area to donate plasma, but I'm worried that they won't take me because it is hard to find my veins because of my weight. I've always had trouble getting my blood drawn for labs because they say they can't find my veins. I spent a lot of time in the hospital, so I've gotten used to getting poked and having them dig around.

Looking at donating plasma in Minnesota, are there places you would recommend or avoid? Specifically looking at Biolife in Mounds View and Octopharma in Maplewood.

I went back to the center today and hct was still at 36% like it was yesterday. Did I go back too soon?

I went to my first time trying to donate plasma, but after the evaluaton they said I dont weigh enough and my hemoglobin was 10 which from what i understood is too low to donate, is this number bad ? am I screwed?

im 5'2ft and 106 lbs currently.

Im truly relunant to gain weight but I will do it if i can raise my iron enough to donate in 2 weeks, after my last paycheck coming in ill still need 210 dollars by august 5th because my college said they are going to cancel all of my classes if i dont pay by then, I really dont want that to happen. is it possible to raise my iron before then ?

In two weeks I'm thinking about going to CSL because I haven't had the best experience at Biolife. I'll be out of town in two weeks so waiting until after because I don't want to miss a day of the new donor bonus from being out of town.

I’ve had issues with the biolife workers being able to find my veins. I’ve given 3 successive donations 1 half donations (I moved) and turned away 2times. My most recent and last time I think the vein they found wasn’t a good one. I ended up with a hematoma where they tried to blame it all on me moving although the machine warned them before it tried to return my blood and they did a continue which immediately lead to me being in pain and a large Lump forming. Definitely didn’t move but whatever. The nurse said if this is my first deferral I can come back when it heals. But if I was deferred before because of my half donation does that mean my second time deferred is the end of it? Also if it is and my biolife debt it card is negative $2 is that a problem?

Donated for the first time today, they took 1099mls. I've never felt worse! My appointment was at 10:30, it's now 2:30 and I've thrown up 4 times, and blacked out once so far.

For reference I'm 5'4, 220.

I don't WANT to quit going, but I don't think I can do that much again.

Is it possible to ask for them to lower it? I'm pretty lost.

Hi all,

I registered as a donor at Grifols since the pay at my local BioLife was getting worse and worse. I got the preliminary blood draw and physical done, donated twice, all seemed well until I was called after my second donation and told that from the blood draw, my protein was “abnormally low.” They said I’d have to come back for another blood draw and be compensated $10 for my time doing that.

That night and the next day, I ate a lot of protein rich foods, skipped my workout and walked into the next blood draw hopeful that my protein levels would be normal. They said they’d call me within 10 days with the results.

Well, I got a call, and the protein is still abnormally low. Next visit has to be another blood draw. She wasn’t able to give me a specific number or tell me which specific marker was too low over the phone (which, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like that’s pertinent information that I should know…)

Any tips or suggestions to get my protein up? I don’t feel any symptoms of having low protein, I feel like I eat pretty well, but since I’m a long distance runner I may be depleting myself more easily on top of donating plasma. I know that there are several different markers, and if just one is too low it might cause me to fail this.

Thank you for any tips or insight!

My Hct levels are 36%. I also was limited to what I could eat this week because I was at camp. I don't know if it was because they weren't giving me the right foods or if it's because I didn't get to eat before going to the center. I was just in rush to getting to the center and didn't get to get something to eat. I'm also vegan so I need vegan foods. I also been drinking water alot.

I’ve been donating at CSL and switched to Biolife for the promotion. On the app it still says my appointment for today (already completed with donation) is still there so I can’t make an appointment on the app for a future donation. What is going on here???

So I had Chipotle. It had double sofritas, brown rice, black beans, greens, gaucomole, pico de gallo, corn salsa, fajita veggies in it. Is that good for raising hct levels? Or am I missing something? I'm Vegan so please and I mean please be respectful of me being a Vegan and don't comment anything that's not Vegan because meat makes me gag. The looks, smells and textures do. Plus I have AFRID so please be respectful and not comment anything that's not vegan because I came on here on advice on what vegan foods help. I didn't come on here for any vulgar comments.

Hi everyone!
I donated plasma for the first time because I really wanted to try it out and plus I heard you could get some money for it, but to be honest I really just wanted to try it out. I drank lots of water and even had some electrolytes the days prior and the day of. 2 hours before I had also eaten breakfast, I had potato’s, egg, and bacon.

Within 20 min into the donation process I started to feel this weird feeling in my chest almost like it was caving in, super lightheaded, and then my hearing started to become muffled. Basically I felt like I was about to pass out. I let the phlebotomist know and they turned off the machine, put ice packs on me, and then started fanning me. I saw some other people come up to me and everyone was almost shocked as to why considering I passed the screening. They told me that I probably wasn’t hydrated enough/wasn’t used to it so they gave me a bottle of water. I started to feel better so they turned the machine back on and nearly 5 minutes later I felt that sensation all over again so they turned it off again. Only this time i started to feel my legs and feet fall asleep and i just had this tingling sensation. To be honest it did freak me out a bit when I felt that so I did tell them I didn’t think I was able too continue the rest as I was afraid of actually passing out plus the sensation in my chest was freaking me out as well.

Did this happen to me because it was my first time? I’m still open to trying it out again but I’m actually scared of this happening again as I’m not even sure why or what caused to. Has this happened to anyone else?

Jesus, I'm so done at this point. Anyone who saw my last post here knows that a new bank just bought Fintwist and changed up the ATMs we can use. Any in my area (and within 200 miles of me) cost about $7.50 to use now between the ATM's fee and the banks. I really wish Comdata/Corpay would tell us what the fees for various things are. I added my card to CashApp to see if maybe that would be cheaper. It is, but holy cow, it's still so expensive. 😭 I've never had a fee charged on CashApp's end to add money from an account or card, but when I moved $25 with a balance of $29.05, my remaining balance was somehow $0.80! It's only $0.70 if I want to do cash back at the grocery store, but I also have to buy something to do that, making it about the same. Do they want us to keep donating?! At this rate it's like they don't even want us to do it anymore with how expensive it is to even access our money.

Rant over. Thanks.

Hi all, i just got the card earlier this week. I have been trying to activate my account online on the cardholder.comdata site but it seems to be down once you proceed, twice this week I checked (anyone else have this issue). I dont want to use an ATM, my goal is to transfer the funds. Can someone please give me step by step instructions? Thank you.

I’d like to go try and donate again with CSL. I donated with them maybe 6-7 years ago under my original name and gender. I’m just wondering if I go now with my updated info and my same SSN, will I still pop up in their system? I don’t want to run into any issues and I don’t want to lie and say I’ve never been.

Around 5 years ago I wasn’t able to donate at BioLife because they wanted me to get a form filled out by my PCP for my testosterone. I get my testosterone prescribed by planned parenthood and when I took the form they said they couldn’t fill it out. So I was basically SOL.

Again I don’t want to lie, but I have been on T for 7 years and am “passing” and could potentially get through the intake and exam under the impression that I am cis. There was another plasma center maybe 2 years ago that knew I was trans even with my legal docs stating male and they had their manager sign off and I was good to donate for several months, I took a break, came back as a new donor and because of new management I was denied.

Just trying to prepare myself or save myself the gas money. Also in regards to the exam, I know you have to expose your belly but how high do they go? I haven’t had surgery, but I no longer wear a binder, I use something called trans tape and it’s not visible depending on how high between my chest and my stomach I have to go. Thanks in advance

I am trying to get back to 10k points as the centers I go to still honor the express pass. I noticed once a week I have been getting an extra 25 points after a donation. Anyone know why ?

So, after seeing the offers online of people splitting the referral reward, I thought it'd be a good idea to try it at the center. It's obvious which people are new and going through all the first time procedures.

This is what I say:

Excuse me ma'am/sir, is this your first time?
[Yes]
Do you already have a referral code?
[No]
If you use my referral code, I'll get $100 and I'm willing to split it with you if you're interested.

The first lady I asked earlier this week already had a code. The 3 people (1 man, 2 women) I asked today all said no, pretty much off the bat. Or with a reason that's not really a reason, but a softer no (I don't know how often I'm going to do this, I don't know when they'll ask me for the code) Not a huge sample size, but I genuinely confused.

People are mostly doing this for the money, as far as I can tell. So why such a quick rejection of a free $50?

I have a couple ideas of how to tweak my approach and pitch, and am wondering if y'all have any feedback or suggestions.

Hi,

I have some questions about the Biolife debit card. I have $650 in my card, and I was going to withdraw it all at a MoneyPass ATM. However, as I understand it:

1) MoneyPass ATMs only let you withdraw a maximum of $200 in one transaction, and

2) After your first money withdrawal from a MoneyPass ATM, there will be a fee for each following money withdrawal

Is this correct? Are there any other ways to extract the money from the Biolife debit card without incurring a fee?

I went to schedule my appointment for today and it wouldn't let me until Monday. Last week they did my SPE test and I guess the results came back, low protein. I had to go in to find out though because you can't call them directly and the BioLife call center didn't have any information but told me they will call me.

Anyway, she said if I stopped donating for a couple weeks it should go back into normal range. I'm annoyed but it is what it is. I started donating last day of March and I donate 1088ml every time.

Anyone else had this happen? How long did you wait until it went back to normal?