Blood. It's In You To Try To Give.
You know, you can't help but feel a little hint of rejection when you go to a blood drive, flash them your cool blood donor's card, run through the questionnaire & interview, get the needles plunged into your arm...and then get deferred. It's not like I was infected with any sort of hideous viral pathogen or anything; I have yet to hunger for human flesh and currently am not muttering the words "'itchy tasty, itchy tasty." Likewise it wasn't because I panicked and started thrashing around, exclaiming how they were all government agents out to get me.
No, it appears that I have a lower than normal blood pressure. Nothing to cause concern, happily, but with the levels I had on Friday, the pleasant (and above all, patient) RNs would have had to endure me sitting there for an hour or so. By their best guess it would have taken that long for my body to pump out the amount of blood they needed. Which might have been an okay thing had the temporary clinic was in its last 5 minutes before the slow teardown, or that I had to go back to work since my lunchbreak was nearing its own end. I'm betting they were just relieved they didn't have to put up with an hour's worth of me. I find myself the most wonderful of company, but newcomers into my dementia can only have so much Vitamin Phil in their systems before going into shock.
So I was deferred. Which meant that I could walk into the permanent blood donor clinic in the city (I didn't even know we had one!) within 24 hours and get my blood extracted, no problems! Well...except for one. Dammit, what are the odds, I'm working all of Saturday, the day the clinic is only open from 9am to 1pm? I like giving blood. It's a very humanitarian cause, very philanthropic, and best of all I get free cookies! Ultimately I was left with most of the same blood in my system as I had a few days ago. But I shall remedy that soon enough.
At the very least there's only mild bruising to mark my adventures with the blood drive. I don't have a problem with needles per say, but I'd rather not be staring directly at them whenever they pierce my flesh. I know my brain will try and get me to believe that I'm in more pain than I really am. However, it looks like I've got a few puncture wounds on my right arm from where they tried to find some decent veins that could fill my donor's bag up in less than an hour. Funny, all I felt at the time was the funkiest sensation that was more like the strangest tickle I'd ever received.
Or else the bruising is actually from the bandaid they put on my elbow after all was said and kind-of-drained. I'd rather it was from the needle. If I bruised from a bandaid while I had no problems with needles, I'd never live it down. "You freak at bandaids? Ha!" are not the words I plan on hearing from everyone I know.
In other news, I now know what to do in case of an emergency in Great Britain. Though I wonder why they assigned something so important as this to the Ministry of Vague Paranoia....
http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/
Quote of the Day: taken from the "Preparing for Emergencies" website, we have things to remember
if you are involved in any emergency. It is important to: Run like hell, particularly if you caused the emergency.
posted by Phillip at 7:40 AM
