All week
I've been taking in the extra H2O, that I normally just get from drinking lots
of coffee or tea, and stocking up on the iron fortified foods that I'm sure I'm
low on because I don't eat red meat. I feel like I'm training for a marathon
and prepping my diet for a long haul. I've been a nervous wreck all week about
donating this blood of mine and not because of the needle, per se, but because
I'm afraid of fainting. In my lifetime I've dropped like a sack of potatoes a
minimum of seven times and stopped at least three instances from happening,
just in time. I'm as ridiculous as the fair maiden's that Shakespeare and
Charles Dickens often wrote about in their stories. Any little thing and I'm
swooning. Some of those instances happened when I was younger but I'm certain
most of the falls were due to dehydration, because I'm known for never drinking
with my food and going hours without so much as a sip of any kind of liquid. I
just never feel thirsty so I forget to replenish essential fluids. Luckily, in
most of those instances, I was always around a friend or relative to catch my
fall, but there were times that I found myself splayed across a floor or a
sidewalk and had no one to make sure I didn't crack my head open or keep me
safe until I could recover. It's scary. I can always tell when it's about to
happen but sometimes it happens so fast I can't find a place to sit or lie down
before the lights go out. The first warning is the feeling of lightness, like
your head has suddenly morphed into a balloon and wants to take flight from
your body. Then just as quickly, your vision begins to take on a brighter shade
of yellow as if you're looking at the world as an old picture from the vintage
days, faded from over exposure of the sun. Then it's blindness. The black matted
edges of the old picture swallow up the light like a shutter and everything
goes black, but you know your eyes are still open and you can hear everything that
is going on around you. Next thing you know, you can't move your body but you
feel hands touching you, grabbing hold of you, pulling you up but you don't
know what's happening because you can't see anything. Slowly, vision starts to
seep back in with that same yellow hue and the searing pain usually follows it.
The pain caused from the fall after landing on something before someone had a
chance to catch you. Even if your head never touches the ground some part of
the body is going down before someone notices you're about to keel over
completely. Whenever this happens to me, I imagine it to be like death or what
it must be like for coma patients, and I get freaked out for the rest of the
day. I imagine those poor people who are considered brain dead or lying in a
hospital somewhere in the coma, helplessly, hearing and feeling everything but are
unable to move their bodies or see the people around them. Everyone standing
around them believing they have no idea what's going on. I think they do. And
it's scary.
When I
drove up to the gate at City Field yesterday, a sweet older man walked out of
his closet sized booth and approached my window. When I rolled the glass down
to tell him I was there for the blood drive, he looked at me with such a benevolent
smile and uttered, "God bless you kids for doing this, it's really nice to
see so many people care about others." I returned a smile to the kind man
and felt a little better about the situation I got myself into. However, I
couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt about it too. Even though my first
intention for donating blood was solely for the cause, getting the free tickets
became the reason I didn't back out. I was mixed with pride for my good deed
and shame for being a freeloader too. Argh.
The feeling
of nervousness wouldn't leave me when I got inside the beautiful new stadium. I
had to remember to take deep breaths without looking like I was in a Lamaze
class, so that I could focus on my surroundings while getting the proper amount
of oxygen to my brain. When I walked in there were two other women waiting for
the elevator that would take us to the donation center on the second level. One
was a large middle-aged woman who looked ready to watch a game that very
minute. Dressed head to toe in Mets colors and sporting an Ike Davis jersey,
she barged into the elevator followed closely by a talkative Chinese woman who
acted like she was going to a dress fitting instead of a blood donation. Their
cavalier demeanor soothed my anxiety a little because they seemed like veterans
of the trade. After checking in at the grand Caesar's Club upstairs and reading
the necessary guidelines and restrictions, I was led through the large space
that was divided into sections. Walking under long strands of exposed bulbs
decorating the ceiling above and the plastic lines carpets below my feet, it
felt like I was on my way to meet Dexter Morgan with a cleaver at the other end
of this destination. I could just see him there, waiting to drain the blood
from my body then cut my limbs in neat little sections to wrap in plastic and
toss in the Hudson later. Breathe Marcy,
in and out, in and out. What I found at the other end was about a dozen men
and women in white smocks and gloved hands standing in a line with manic smiles
plastered on their faces to greet me. I didn't know who to look at first. Which
one didn't look as bloodthirsty? Amanda, she looked...normal. A stout,
brunette, girl next door type. She was the first one to take a step forward, so
Amanda it was. With a shaky hand I passed her my file with a forced smile and
she led me through a maze of make shift cubbies to her little office. There she
questioned my sexuality and gender, a few too many times, and the spelling of
my name, even though my driver's license was four inches from her face the
whole time. I wondered if brilliant Amanda was going to lay the claim of
sucking the blood out of my body too. After the questions where logged onto my
file, Amanda proceeded to pull out her tools for testing my blood for its count,
iron levels and any sexually transmitted diseases. I'm sure the color was
beginning to drain from my face at this point because once she started to wipe
my finger I was beginning to see my surroundings in a brighter hue than normal.
Good thing I was already sitting down. I can handle a lot of pain, I just don't
like knowing it's coming. I'd rather just have it done with so I can get over
it. My blood was good; iron levels just hit the mark. Wonderful. Can I have my tickets now before I change my mind?
After the test, my fearless
leader, Amanda, guided me back out of the maze of cubbies towards the bedding
area. However, before we got more than two feet away from the maze, a man who
looked me over like I was a filet minion, stopped us in our tracks and asked me
to show him my arms. Very confused and nervous about his intentions, I showed
him my arms like I was a recovering junkie with her parole officer, baring my
arms so that he could take a look to see if I was shooting up the night before.
"Nah, you can keep her." He
said then walked away. Oh, geez. Thanks buddy. Sorry to disappoint
you. Amanda was kind enough to explain what he was looking for when she saw
my confused face turn into a mixture of hurt and anger. Apparently, the
disgruntled plasma-sucker was looking for double red donors but my veins were
too small for him. He would have had to probably stab me a few times before he
found a decent vein. Good God! Keep that
man away from me. I didn't quite know what double red donations were so I asked
Amanda what it was and she explained that it was similar to a whole blood donation, except a special
machine is used to allow you to donate two units of red blood cells during one
donation while returning your plasma and platelets back to you. When she told
me this I was a little woozy and disgusted by the whole idea of having that
much blood sucked out of my veins then returned back to my body in a degenerated
form of itself. Because I have the universally accepted blood Type O, the plasma-sucking
vampire was excited by my blood but turned off by its slender form of transportation,
so he passed. I was beginning to feel like Sookie from True Blood. It's a good thing he passed too, because I would have
been peeved to find out what I was in for after the fact. Apparently, my bad
experience back in high school was actually doing a double red donation and I
didn't even know it. I realized this when Amanda told me the donation I signed
up for would only take about ten minutes to do and I was baffled. As my memory,
although a little hazy, serves me correctly, I remembered the last experience
lasting nearly an hour. In fact I very clearly remember sitting upright in a
chair, being poked twice with a needle then squeezing a ball for about forty
minutes. The unpleasant part wasn't so much the insertion of that needle but it
was the way in which it was put in. Every time I had to squeeze that ball in my
hand the needle was forced to dig into the vein by my arm muscle. Although the
pain was almost unbearable, I had to continue to keep squeezing so the vein wouldn't
close or slow its flow of blood. A few days later I was walking around with
massive bruises and puncture wounds on the inside of my arms that I had people
wondering if I was heroine addict or a victim of child abuse. After that, I
vowed I would never do it again. Here I am, a decade and a half later, and I
assumed that all blood donations were that long and painful and it took me this
long to do it again. You live, you learn.
Once Amanda had me strapped and
finally found a vein, in went the sting of the needle and that dang ball I had
to squeeze in hand. I couldn't even glance at the needle, even though I could
feel its presence beside me like a hungry bee buzzing around my ear. I was
afraid if I did, I would be a goner the second I were to sit up from that bed
just thinking about it. As I lay there, massaging that ball in my hand every
few seconds, I tried to distract myself by watched a bad infomercial on the TV
facing away from Amanda and that needle. In my peripheral vision I could still
see her hovering by my side, swaying back and forth on her feet as she kept
watch of the flow of blood draining from my arm. She reminded me of a painter
surveying her work. Every time she checked the bag with a little squeeze of her
right hand she would then step back on her left leg, lean herself away from the
bed and tilt her head from side to side as if she were double checking the
dimensions of her work with the light from the window behind her. Then she
would step forward again and give the bag another little squeeze. Less than ten
minutes later, a man suddenly came out of nowhere, slid the needle out of my
arm and pushed some gauze over the small hole in my vein. As Amanda proceeded
to detached the needle from the bag I noticed some slight confusion that
registered on her face with the arrival of this man. It had me wondering if something
was wrong at first, then if he was supposed to even be there. Was he bored? Is pulling
needles out of donor's arms his sole purpose for being there? Amanda had done
all of the work on her own, up to this point, what was this guy doing here, sliding
in like he was tagging into first base at a game? He seemed satisfied with his
work though. Glad I could give him the pleasure he seeked. I was just grateful
the whole thing was over.
After I was bandaged up Amanda lead
to the recovery area where various sweets, juices and water were lined in a
buffet on a table like something you would find at a child's birthday party. I
couldn't look at anything but a glass of OJ before sitting down. Nothing seemed
appetizing even though sugar is a weakness of mine. A few minutes later the
Chinese woman I rode up on the elevator with sat in the chair next to me. We
began a conversation that started with our recent experience then it turned
into a discussion about our families over the pictures she pulled out of her
purse. She even had a picture of her wedding from twenty-two years ago. Talk
about carrying your life in a bag. Apparently, donating blood has been more
like an obsession for her than anything else. This forty-two year old woman
first started donating blood a few years ago, for a fleece blanket the New York
blood bank was giving away to its donors. She wanted a blanket, so she gave them
a pint of her blood in exchange for one. Then she started coming to the Red
Cross with her husband to get Mets tickets for the both of them and their two
daughters. Along with tickets, for every donation you also get a little pin in
the shape of a blood drop donning the iconic Red Cross in its center. This
woman made sure to get her latest pin from the nurse going around the recovery
area checking in on us, to add to her growing collection of souvenirs. When she
told me about all of the donations she's done over the past few years, I was
mixed with awe at her wonderful sense of giving and also worried about her health.
This little obsession couldn't be good for the body when you do it as much as
she does. As nice as it is to do this, I worried her intentions now became more
about what she could collect on a material basis. I imagined her home looking
like an episode of Hoarders and I was
tempted to tell her that maybe she should take a break for a few months and
consider donating some of the goods she's horded from the Red Cross and New
York blood bank and give them to the poor instead of her blood for a while.
Suddenly I wasn't so worried about the measly pint of blood I had just lost
when this woman has lacked nearly a pint of blood for the last half dozen
years.
After jabbering about our lives for
nearly an hour, it was time to go about our lives and continue our recuperation
for the day. We both went to collect our prizes together before leaving Citi
Field at the front entrance. There we each received two tickets sitting next to
each other for September 17th's game against the Phillies, so we knew we would
see each other again soon and bid each other farewell until then.
When I got home all I wanted to do
was sleep. Nothing else sounded even remotely exciting on a Saturday off, but
bed. I slept for three hours then when I woke up I ordered some pizza. With a
small pineapple and onion pie resting on my lap I sat lazily on the couch for
the rest of the evening watching back-to-back episodes of The Sopranos. As they sprayed
each other with bullets and beat each other into bloody pulps on the screen, I
eventually lost my appetite half way through my pizza thinking out all the
blood floating around this afternoon. I eventually fell back asleep just as the
sun set and didn't wake up until this morning. I'm such a wuss. What a waste of
a perfectly good Saturday night. Oh, well. I think I deserved a day to be lazy
anyway.
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