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

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[cloudsinvenice]

A few years ago I was researching medieval monks and discovered that in a Cistercian monastery (maybe others too, but that's who I focused on), the whole monastic community would be ritually bled every few months

Re: Deleted and re-posting to fix epic typos

[banespawn]

Leeches are a possibility, though from what I've read, they don't cause pain. Using them to extract the blood would definitely increase the "ick" factor though.

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[marycatelli]

Bleeding was in fact a routine medical practice for quite a long time; it was thought to balance the humors. Your monks are not unusual.

[fisher_queen]

I've had anemia in the past, and I think I've got it back again because I'm having similar symptoms so I can tell you a little bit about that if you would like. When I'm anemic, I get extremely dizzy and tired, have to sit down frequently, and my asthma gets thrown out of whack by these things. I have a harder time doing things like walking up stairs or over a distance. I'd have to take frequent breaks and naps before the blood test that figured this out.

I can also speak to the larger needles, which basically is "ow fucking HELL." They doped me up with morphine before sucking fluid out of me via one of those, and I do still have a hole in one of the spots (they sucked it there to test twice in as many days) where it was drawn from almost four years later. I'm not sure how this work with drawing blood itself, but I definitely had marks from having had those needles used on me.

[cyphomandra]

As a (possibly unhelpful) flipside, I had 500mL of blood taken off every week for three months to treat a disease where I store too much iron; I had to drink more fluids on the day I had the blood taken, and I couldn't do hill sprints that day either without fainting, but otherwise I felt fine and kept up my running training, and even knocked two minutes off my 10k time. However, your MC is going to be dealing with a much greater time period, and if he's a captive I presume is not in a great condition to start with, so I think fatigue, slow healing etc is the way to go. I'm not sure how your MC's captors know how much to take, so I'd wonder if they started off small and then are escalating over time - or, if they're running out of veins, and just trying anything

[loopymushroom]

I was recently badly anaemic after declining a recommended blood transfusion post-surgery. I don't know how much blood I lost in the postop bleeding, but my haemoglobin was low enough that the consultant was Not Happy about not transfusing me. (I took a giant amount of iron for two months instead, and it was fine.) I felt as though I was constantly on a ship - when I walked it felt as though the floor was swaying underneath me, and even lying still I felt the room was spinning. It was quite frightening. When I got home I literally lay in bed all day except for going to to loo. My brain was foggy, I couldn't concentrate on anything more complicated than Upstairs Downstairs or drawing. Thinking or talking while performing any kind of task was a major challenge. The smallest, stupidest thing was exhausting - walking five yards to the bathroom was an ordeal, and showering made me cry, I was so weak and tired. Couldn't stand up in the shower, because it was standing for too long - I had to sit on the floor. I physically couldn't climb