The Season for Giving

"You have a great vein for platelets."

She says this to me after I've told her about my horrible fear of needles and how hard it is for me to even walk into the Blood Donor Center without getting nauseous.

I hate the Blood Donor Center. Everywhere you look there is a poster with a cartoony drop of blood character who tells you all about donating blood, platelets or plasma! Every wall, every desk, every surface is covered with them. They even have "Droppy the Blood" (not his real name) featured on place mats in the post-donation snack area. Droppy reveals each intimate detail of the process in cute bubble letters and ends every step with an exclamation point.

Instead of donating a pint of whole blood, you can donate a particular component like platelets, plasma or red blood cells!

At all times during the platelet collection process, your blood is contained within a sterile tubing system!

Your blood 'takes a spin' in a centrifuge and is then returned to your body!

Obviously, we all now know why they have to beg for people to give blood. Who needs these gross details? Sit me in a chair, don't talk to me, let me look at a blank wall and tell me when I'm done. You may remember my last blood donation adventure when I got so sick that I almost passed out and had to spend an hour waiting in a reclined chair with a wet rag on my head. I warned the nurse this time and she did really well with me until the platelet comment.

"You know, you can give platelets as soon as three days from now."

God. Dammit. Are you kidding me?

As I mentioned in my last post about blood donation, I am blood type O Negative. Me and about 6% of the United State's population. (Thanks Droppy!) O Negative is the super blood. I'm a "Universal Donor" meaning my blood can save anyone's life and is the most sought after. So I have to donate. It kills me, I hate it, it completely freaks me out. It's been almost three hours since I finished up this morning and I'm still sick to my stomach. But. I have to do it. How could I not? And now thanks to that fucking nurse, I get to do it again.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling.

Yesterday I had my second wheelchair ride of the year. Number one, as you may remember, was after I injured my coccyx ice skating. Number two happened yesterday after I donated blood.

Yes, I know I was supposed to have donated my precious O-negative blood last Thursday, but I chickened out. Okay? Sue me. I worked out my fears, mostly, and made it in to the blood center yesterday afternoon for a 5:40 PM appointment. I got there early, filled out all of the paperwork -- No, I have not shared needles recently. No, I am not a man who has had sex with another man in the past thirty years. No, I have not spent an extended amount of time in Nigeria. -- and the party started.

Let me start by saying that during this entire episode (starting with getting on the train to travel to the blood center) I was sweating profusely and could not stop my hands from shaking.

So, for those of you who have never been through a blood donation process, here's how it goes.

Step one. Paperwork. Here you fill out an extensive sheet of questions to prove that you are neither a intravenous drug user nor a sexual deviant. You also have to promise that you're not donating blood just to get an HIV test. I think I had to promise that about three times. "Question 1. Are you donating blood today to have an HIV test?" No. "Question 8. Is this donation of blood in order for you to find out your HIV status?" No. "Question 24. Are you concerned about having HIV and using this test to find out?" No. "Question 30. Do you have syphilis or gonorrhea?" No. "Question 52. Are you donating blood to make sure you don't have syphilis or gonorrhea?" Jesus Christ. Step two. The initial assault. After you fill out the paperwork, you take it into a little room where you hand it over to a nurse. "Okay. I see that you have answered no to questions 1, 8, 24, 30 and 52. Are you aware that blood donation is not a method for being tested for sexually transmitted diseases?" Arrgh. Yes lady. Can we please get on with this? "Great. Gimme your finger." This is when Nurse Rita prepares a little bed of alcohol swabs and gauze and then takes one of those plastic frames they use at TGIFriday's to advertise the Mug-o-rita flavor of the day on the tables to use as a shield from any blood splatter that may occur. She grabs my middle finger and slashes it with a tiny razor and sucks the blood into a little glass shard that she puts into a machine. Handing me the form again, Nurse Rita says, "Here you go, honey. Go on over to the second hall on the left."Step three. The second hall on the left. When you turn into this hallway you are faced with row after row of what appear to be dentist chairs with little TV's hanging over each one. Here I'm strapped into a chair by chatty Nurse Linda. Nurse Linda is in school studying English and doesn't like to spend a lot of money on her clothes. She feels that two pairs of jeans are sufficient and only wears about three of the 20 or so uniform tops she owns. She liked the book "1984" but feels that poetry is kinda crappy. Except for Walt Whitman who wrote about crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. She can relate to that. She had a long day yesterday and was considering paying the $80 cab fare to get home to New Jersey. She doesn't understand why when she was younger she was able to write a ten page essay in one sitting but now is having problems completing a three-page assignment. But she's paid for $1000 for this English class and by god she is going to pass it. Although, she'd like an A she'd settle for a B right about now. The entire time Nurse Linda is chatting, she is tying up my arm, smacking my veins to get them to pop up, shoving the world's largest needle in my arm (the picture above is not my arm. I couldn't handle watching my own blood come out.) and collecting little vials of my blood. I heard everything she said, but with a background track of my own voice, "Dear Smoking Baby, do not let me pass out. Am I pale? I feel like I'm going to faint. Why won't she just shut up? I don't want to have to pay attention to her because she's over there with my punctured arm and the river of blood coursing through the tubes into the seemingly enormous bag and it's totally freaking me out. Jesus, please shut up. Stop talking to me. God I hope I don't throw up. Don't people understand how traumatic this is?" Sweat, sweat, sweat, shake, shake, shake. "Please god don't let me vomit."

"Honey," Nurse Linda says holding the collection bag up to my face, "do you think you could squeeze a little more? You should be finished by now, and we need to fill this bag up." Groan.

Finally we're done and she asks if I'm okay. Anxious to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible, I say yes and head off to apple juice and Oreo cookies. As soon as I reach the snack table another nurse appears and asks if I'm okay. "No. I don't think so."

Next thing I know I'm surrounded and people are shoving my head between my legs and instructing me to cough.

"Cough."
"Honey. You've gotta cough harder than that."
"COUGH. (God. I'm going to throw up.)"
"There you go. Now, why did you say you were okay? Do you think you can walk really fast?"
"No," I mumble from between my knees."
"Alright then. Sit over here." And it's the wheelchair. Back to the second hall on the left.I sat and waited for my blood pressure to come back for almost an hour. As I left Nurse Linda says, "Okay honey. See you in November!"

Damn You, Jenni.

People. There is a drug out there that is taking the lives and spare time of bloggers everywhere (besides blogging). Seriously. It's worse than crank. This is a screenshot of my Google Analytics page. I visit this page at least eight times daily. "How many people have read the blog so far today?" (two, at my last check) Bastards. Not the readers -- the developers of Google Analytics.

It's actually a great program. I can see, not only how many readers I've had, but also things like a map of the world to show me where they're all from. (I am pretty big in Canada. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but G.A. does not lie.) Recently on one of my more obsessive visits to G.A., I was looking around and stumbled onto a page that tells me how my readers get to me -- direct traffic, search engines, or referring sites.

One referring site I found was A One Cylinder Love Riot. Turns out this girl, Jenni lurves my blog. Her word, not mine. In fact, my blog is listed on her site under the heading, "Some of the Blogs I Lurve." (Here I come O! Not only do I receive hate mail, I have a fan. A real fan. Someone I don't know. Amazing!) I check out the blog and the homepage is, "overcoming fears." It's a story of how Jenni is afraid of needles but worked through it to become a blood donor. (She lurves my blog AND she's a do-gooder.)

Here's the thing. I have type O-negative blood -- the rare and extremely valuable type known for being the "universal" blood type. I can only receive type O-negative blood, but my blood can be used for anyone, no matter what type they are. I have known this for years. So, you'd think I'd be a fervent blood donor. However. I am terrified of needles. So terrified that when I went into Dr. Luckie's office for my booster vaccination when I was a sophomore in high school, I ended up in a foot race around the office with his nurse. (Dr. Luckie later blindsided me when I was screaming at the nurse that there was no way I was getting a shot.)

Then Jenni. I read her post and thought, "Jesus Christ, Susan. You are 37 years old. There has been devastation in Texas. People all over need blood and you have super blood. What is wrong with you?" So I posted on Jenni's blog and told her that I was going to donate. Then she wrote me back.

Hi Susan

Needles freak me out, too! It was pretty scary, but I'm really glad I did it. I can understand being O-negative you'd want to try even harder. I'm A- so I'm not all that in-demand *lol*.

Good luck & let me know how it goes!

So, now I have to follow through.

Pray for me.

Better yet. Pray for the nurses at the New York Blood Center.