Blood Brothers

I didn't advertise this time around that I was going to give blood today. I guess it's because I've grown so unbearably mature and discreet that I don't have to go around caroling for three days in advance making sure that everyone knows that I am willingly! obligingly! graciously! giving of myself to save someone's life, and most likely going to lose mine in the process. Because if I do anything well, it's exaggerating the mundane. An ordinary cold turns into a full-scale case of pneumonia, and a small scratch becomes a gangrenous, gaping gash threatening the loss of a limb and a deadly infection. I give myself permission to exaggerate because it's so rare that I have anything wrong with me, I have to make up for lost complaining time. Those people who are always sick are always complaining, and well, I'm never sick, so I have a lot of ground to cover in order to be equal.

Nevertheless, who is now typing to you is a mere ghost of her former self, for I have donated blood today, and in my weakened condition, all I can do is tell you about how I nearly lost my life trying to save another.

I was called by the Red Cross last week to see if I could donate blood. After hemming and hawing for about 10 seconds, I realized I didn't really have a legitimate reason not to give blood, and so I found myself being signed up for the 5:15 PM slot on Wednesday the 20th.

In high school, I donated blood a couple of times. The week before donating, I had to mentally prepare myself for being pricked with two needles because my fear of shots is something deeply unreasonable and ingrained. I am ok with cutting or bruising myself, but being pricked by a needle makes a 3rd degree burn pale in comparison. One of my earliest memories is going to the doctor and having to have 4 technicians hold me down for one measly shot, and after that I vowed to never let myself be mutilated like that again. I deigned to let myself be violated a few more times before reaching 7th grade, and then I boycotted doctors until college. Which means the first week of college I was forced to go into the health center where the nurse loaded a machine gun with injections and wildly shot them at me, hoping some of them would stick as I ran shrieking around the room.

So I arrived to my appointment 15 minutes early, all jittery about my impending doom. I walked into the room where Miss Congeniality was playing on TV and a few senior citizens were slowly lowering themselves onto the operating tables, ready to give the last pint of blood in their withered bodies while wheezing out their final will and testament to a waiting lawyer, adding "If I can't help myself, at least I can help someone else!"

All those embarassing questions, ones mortifying enough to make a good Catholic girl blush to the bottom of her shoes, in the vein of "Have you been having a ton of sex with all those people who have signs reading 'I am HIV positive!' hung around their necks?" are now in a computer that one can answer in the privacy of her own cubicle. Which means that I was more tempted than ever to answer no to all of the questions, and the later ask "So what IS anal sex?"

I was ushered out onto the floor to start giving blood. My nurse drew a huge black box on the inside of my elbow, as if to say "This is the general aread of your vein. I will now close my eyes and blindly poke in that black box, hoping I will hit something eventually." Luckily, she knew what she was doing, but my nervous giggling and cracking jokes about how the iodine rub was tickling me did not have the desired effect of administering the needle to herself and letting me watch the movie in peace. I was jabbed with a needle and left to bleed for the next half hour. It turns out I have the slowest moving blood on the face of the earth, despite drinking enormous amounts of water. Two senior citizens were in and out of their chairs by the time I had finished giving my one measly, ahem, gargantuan pint of blood. Those elderly people might be old, but their blood runs fast.

I took so long in giving the blood that I evidently aroused the concern of a couple of people around me. When done, I was made to lie on the bed for 15 minutes before getting up to sit at the table for another 15 minutes. I have no idea what I looked like, but I guess I looked pitiful enough for everyone to call me "honey," and for one of the nurses to run and grab about 15 water bottles when I asked for one. I felt fine, but I guess since losing my tan from the summer, it's pretty easy for me to look white.

That's that. My blood is on its way to save some convict or drunk driver or serial killer who got in a car accident.

I'm exhausted from this physical exertion. It's time to go to sleep.