Effects of repeated, long-term blood donation

[banespawn]

I'm writing a fantasy novel in which a character has a curse that makes his blood the source of all magic. This curse only afflicts one person at a time. When that person dies, someone else inherits the curse. This has been going on for a thousand years and the current cursed individual has been held prisoner for 15 years, during which time his

Comments

[mutive]

One of my brothers gives blood every few months. (We have a semi-rare blood type, so the blood banks LOVE him. Me less so. I'm not sure why.)

To the best of my knowledge, he does not suffer in the least from this fairly frequent blood letting. The body regenerates blood fairly quickly. Blood banks do not take it from you in less time than it takes to regenerate the blood. As long as you're getting a balanced diet (which includes iron), you're probably fine giving a pint every month or two.

If you want to go wild and crazy, I suppose that you could make your MC donate blood so often that he became anemic. But being anemic doesn't really put you in pain - it more makes you tire easily and get a bit dizzy. (And men are rarely anemic - typically it's women who end up with that problem as we lose iron during menstruation.) Admittedly, you could come up with a scenario where your MC is bled so often that he became anemic. But that would probably wouldn't really make him "in pain", so much as make him behave like a stereotypical Victorian maiden. (Who faints easily, gets dizzy, etc. Check out "anemia" for more ideas.)

Either way, giving blood is pretty easy for someone in good health.

[marycatelli]

There was a recent study on heart patients that found that taking blood for tests had caused a good number of the patients to become anemic. (Which was Not Good for them.) True, they were not well, but anyone who loses too much blood will be anemic.