Embrace Your Inner Turnip

Here I sit, sipping a glass of wine (against orders) to wash down the green salad I had for dinner (against orders), waiting for my heart to stop racing from the day's events, not to mention the Coke I had at lunch (against orders).

They don't tell you never to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie before giving blood, though. I did keep my bandage on for four hours (per orders). Indeed, it's still on now. At this point I'm pretty sure that when I take it off, a literal geyser of gore will splatter-paint my bedroom walls with crimson.

For one thing, my room is done in burgundy and cream, so bright red would totally not work. For another, splatter-painting is SO '90s. Kind of like, you know, those convertible shorts pants with the zip-off legs that nobody wears anymore. Nobody.

I had lots of time to get phriendly with my phlebotomist today; she was so methodical and careful in her choice of which vein to tap. She called one of the others over to consult with him. "This one right here, I see where it is, it shouldn't be hard to hit," she said, tapping on a vein in my right arm. "But I don't know. I really like this one," indicating my left arm. "It's a side vein, and it runs along the muscle, but it's so nice and plump and bouncy."

"I won't tell you which vein to tap," the other, presumably more experienced phlebotomist said. "You're the one doing it, so it's your call."

They are artists, these people.

Did you know that the veins that run along the side of your forearms, while closer to the surface, tend to shift around when you flex your muscles? They're easier to find, but also easy to lose, or to close off with incautious poking or taping. The vein in my right arm is a safe bet - it's anchored firmly in the comfortable hollow of my inner elbow - but the one on the left, if you hit it just right, will pay off big time. You can drain me in five minutes flat. It's really quite spectacular.

All this talk was, perhaps, more informative than reassuring. However, once she had determined her plan of attack, the insertion of the needle was painless and the blood flowed easily. I was relieved enough to join gigglingly into their conversation, which had turned to the best place to get a good deal on the latest fashions in surgical scrubs. "Do you think," the girl asked, "they had bell-bottomed scrubs back in the '70s?"

"Oh my gosh," I said. "Do you remember those convertible-shorts, zip-off-leg pants everybody was wearing in the '90s?" They did. "Well, just a couple of years ago, I used to work with a guy who wore those, still. Every. Single. Day."

I looked a little nervously over my shoulder after mentioning this, but then I thought, come on. As if Coworker-You-Idiot would ever give blood. Would he? At any rate, he was nowhere in sight. For heaven's sake, I hadn't even thought of the man in I don't know how long.

His name shall never again pass between us.

Five minutes later I was sent to the "canteen" (really, just a handful of chairs set up in a loose semicircle around a table with Oreos, Nutter Butters, Fig Newtons, Sprite, and Gatorade) with instructions to spend at least 10 minutes to recover. In a randomly unrelated instance, a photographer from our agency's employee newsletter had shown up, just as I was finished, to take a few promotional photos of the blood drive. I drained for an extra two minutes or so as a result. Considering the masterful way that phlebotomist tapped my fat, succulent vein, who knows how much extra blood I lost?

I sat down in the canteen. I opened a mini-pack of Fig Newtons. I took a bite.

"Well, hello there!" A new arrival rose from the waiting chairs near the entrance and dropped into the seat next to me, taking my hand. "Elizabeth! How have you been?"

I was a little dazed. "Oh my gosh, how are you?" I said, with unfeigned amazement - since, as I mentioned, I hadn't even thought of him since I don't know when.

"Great! Great!" he enthused. "And you, how are you liking it over in your new division?"

"Oh, I love it," I said; "actually, you know, I work with your boss, Bill's, cousin now..."

"Great!" he said. "Bill went over to Travel too, didn't he?"

I was puzzled. The Bill I was talking about is C-Y-I's boss; and while I've seen firsthand the kind of cognitive limitations C-Y-I may be working under, I guess I still expect him to know, at least roughly, what division his boss works in. But he went on. "Bill, the little guy, the one with the... you know... (he gestured vaguely with one hand)..."

Oh, THAT Bill. "No, he went to a different division," I said. "It was good, he seemed to like it there."

"I was happy to get out of our old office myself," he said. "But I'm really glad I was able to finish up that last big project I had. Man, you helped so much with that. You probably 10-keyed about eight times as much as everybody else who was doing it. You were so good at it."

I felt unprepared to respond to this gallantry. "Ahahaha," I said.

"So, your name changed," he continued, "you got divorced? So you're single now! Seeing anyone?"

And this is the other thing they don't tell you when you give blood: that the recovery canteen makes great hunting grounds for state employees who might prefer a woman a little on the woozy side.

I left, actually - in fact I told him I am dating his boss' cousin (this is true), so he took his leave, and I smiled and waved and left without finishing my Fig Newton.

But I did notice, woozing gently out the door, that he was wearing normal pants. I'm sure there's some kind of significance to this fact. Maybe after a couple more glasses of wine, it will all make sense.

Bloody Hell

There's no better way to lighten a lousy mood than by doing a good deed, and as it happens, they had a blood drive at work today. I always participate in these, always. I'm a regular: the phlebotomists know me by name. And I know the answers to all the crack-whore questions by heart!*

The guy who came in right after me got a T-shirt, because he was a walk-in. I'm a regular. I had an appointment. How come regulars don't get a T-shirt?

I'm so regular, I don't get faint or even light-headed after donating, and you can drain me in five minutes flat. BP is 106/80, pulse rate 64, temperature 97.8 degrees, iron level 46. I don't mean to brag or anything, but when you get right down to it, I'm perfect.

Except for this leprosy thing on my arm. Do you know, leprosy is not on the list of disqualifiers for being a blood donor? You'd think it would be, wouldn't you? Maybe it doesn't need to be because when they stick you, your arm falls off, and then you just get deferred. That would make sense. Anyway, my doctor said this was eczema, but that was months ago, it hasn't gotten any better, the steroid cream has run out, and I'm going with leprosy.

There was a new guy at the blood drive today. "Which arm do you normally use?" he asked.

"Normally my right," I said, "but it's got this weird rash right on the inside of the elbow and I don't know if you could find the vein," and I showed him.

He cringed. "Let's try your left," he said.

It turns out there's a reason they always use my right arm: it's because the left one does not actually have any veins in it. The poor phlebotomist had me squeeze the little rubber football about 50 times, finally swabbing a hesitant iodine line well outside of the range of where I would normally expect a human vein to be. He turned away to prepare the needle, turned back, and frowned. "Squeeze some more," he said. "Try rotating your wrist for me."

I did, but I was a little nervous at this point. "If you don't want to look," he added, reassuringly, "nobody's making you."

SON of a BITCH! that needle HURT going in! I dislike pain on general principles, but I can handle the brief sting that you normally get when the needle is inserted. But this one really hurt, and it kept right on really hurting, after it had been placed. And kept on. I was trying not to whimper, but not very successfully.

"DAMN it," he said, after a few moments, "I screwed up. I just pulled the needle out by mistake."

I whimpered something, but he had no intention of sticking me again. He called someone else over, stripping off his gloves in annoyance. "I'm done," he said, stalking off. "I need to stop now before I really hurt somebody."

"Oh no," I thought, and called after him, "Please don't feel bad! It's okay!" But he just walked away.

His coworker put gloves on, wiped the iodine off my arm and bandaged me. "You feeling all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I said, "it wasn't so bad."

"Let's turn you around and try the other arm," he said, not seeming too taken aback by my leprotic condition. "We can try going in right through here..."

And at this point the remainder of my need to do a good deed by my fellow man evaporated. "Can I just leave?"

I didn't get a T-shirt. I didn't get a snack, not even those little bite-sized cheesy Ritz things. I am in such a lousy mood.

-------------------
*"No"

Mind Your Own Business

They were giving out fortune cookies at the blood drive at work today. I opened mine. “We need each other. Please give blood,” it read.

“This is kind of weird with ‘in bed’ at the end,” I complained to the blood drive coordinator, but she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

Giving blood bothers me a lot less than it used to and I don’t really get nervous anymore, but the long list of intensely personal questions is still pretty embarrassing. And it takes such a long time! The actual blood-donation part of donating blood only lasts about five minutes, but the screening, prep work, and post-donation snacking take up the better part of an hour, especially if they have those little Ritz cheese sandwiches.

As I was lying down on the table, one of the phlebotomists called over from the screening area, “This gentleman needs to leave for lunch – can he just come back and finish afterwards?”

“You’ll have to take all his vitals again,” replied the woman swabbing my arm.

“All of them? Even the iron?”

“Yes,” she responded, “but you don’t have to run through the questions again.”

This troubled me. What if the man was planning to turn tricks on his lunch hour? Or get a tattoo or a cornea transplant, or hop an express flight to London for a cheeseburger? You don’t know.

Actually, I asked about the tattoo question, because I’m always kind of toying with the idea of getting one, and they ask if you’ve had a tattoo within the last twelve months. (They also ask you if, during the last twelve months, you’ve had sexual contact with anyone who takes drugs or money for sex, a man who’s had sex with another man, anyone who uses needles to take illegal drugs, and a few other things. I always answer no, but to be perfectly honest, I’m just guessing.)

“So do you get deferred if you get a tattoo?” I asked the phlebotomist.

“Only if you did it outside of Texas,” he said.

So now you know. I didn’t ask, but I’m sure the same standard applies to all the nosy questions they ask about what you do in bed.

M'aider!

If you think giving blood is scary, try doing it right after finishing a six-hour first aid/CPR class, complete with full-color, magnificently photographed images of how bits of the insides of people's bodies look. Maybe even yours.

I'm sorry, but if God had meant you to see what your eyeball looks like with a screwdriver sticking out of it, He wouldn't have created humans in the first place, because obviously He must hate them.

Giving blood frightens me, even though I've done it on a regular basis for a few years now. I get all jittery walking over to the donation center. I hate the needle going into my arm. I hate the initial finger stick even more, even though I've had it done 80 kajillion times and it never hurts at all. I get all cotton-mouthed right beforehand, and tense up and cringe. I hate it.

I don't mind the actual donation, lying there on the bed with my lifeblood serenely draining away. It's kind of peaceful. Well, except that phlebotomists, like hair stylists, are apparently trained to relax their victims by making small talk at them. That's just so awkward.

Also awkward is the list of questions they read to you in a monotone, so quickly that you don't really have time to understand what they're asking. The correct answer is almost always "no." They occasionally throw in a "yes" question just to mess with you, though. The reason they do this is so that when they ask you, "Have you taken money or drugs for sex at any time since 1977?" you will have to pause briefly to think about it before answering, and then they can snicker at you.

There are about twenty more crack-whore-themed questions after that, one after another, that begin with "In the last 12 months, have you had sexual contact with..." and after four or five of those I kind of want to snap at them. Can we skip those? Please?! Because, if the question contains the phrases "in the last twelve months" and "sexual contact," all you're doing is making me depressed.

Not, mind you, that I particularly wanted to sell my body to a heroin-addicted bisexual Albanian drug smuggler with mad cow disease and hepatitis B. It's just the principle of the thing.

But once again I conquered my fears, and managed to do some miniscule bit of good in the world, and went back to my office proudly wearing the Hot Pink Bandage of Courage. And if you suffer from a heart attack or a stroke or get electrocuted or fall off a ladder, I'll be able to help you out there, too!

But if you've got a screwdriver sticking out of your eye, you can go find yourself another sucker. I don't even want to see that shit.

Question of the Day

Do citronella candles actually do anything?!?!?

How about if you melt them down and smear the wax all over your body?

Just wondering.

Ready for the Weekend

Anna was taken aback by the bright green bandages on my arms when I got home. "Why do you have those?" she asked.

"Because I gave blood at work today," I said.

She was perplexed. "Somebody at work ran out of blood?"

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me.

Today feels like a Friday: the last day of school, and there's jubilation in the air. I just dropped Eric off at his grandma's house for the long weekend.

She gardens, my ex-mother-in-law, which is odd. Inside the house it's always dark and gloomy. It's furnished and decorated with heavy, almost Gothic antiques. The TV, the only light source in the living room, is never off. There are big windows, but they never seem to admit any light. My ex-father-in-law floats around the place, vaguely, like an alcohol-fueled ghost. It's an incredibly depressing place; but outside is a profusion of bloom and life that contrasts starkly with the airless indoors.

Whereas I tend to be the other way around: my home tends to be, if not in the strictest sense clean, at least cozy and cheerful inside; but my outdoor design and maintenance abilities make the baby Jesus cry.

It should be a fun weekend. I'm going to Corpus with friends, liquor, and the flying spaghetti car. There will be dancing!

With luck, there won't be any further bloodshed.