Yesterday, I finally went to the blood bank and not only donated blood, but also put myself on the Marrow Donor Registry...

The entire process was about 2 1/2 hours, although it would have been shorter for anyone except me...

After filling out all the forms and actually having to think about whether or not I've had sex recently with any drug-addicted male prostitutes, they had me sit and watch a 10 minute video on how bone marrow is extracted from your body...about 2 minutes into the video, an older Asian man who worked there stood right in front of me, his head filling the entire tv screen...and started trying to change the channel. I said "um...excuse me..??"...he looked around, then saw me behind him, and said "Oh!...do you mind if I change the channel??"...then looked down at me holding the Bone Marrow Donor booklet, looked back up at the TV...then said "Oh!!" again, finally catching on...He proceeded to tell me what he was trying to do, which he was no longer trying to do since I was supposed to be watching the video he was distracting me from watching...by the time he left, half the video had passed by, and I had only caught glimpses of it...I think they mentioned something about spatulas and Conway Twitty...but I could be wrong.

Afterwards, I was taken into a side room where my index finger was sliced open with a butcher knife...well, ok, it was a small pin prick I barely felt, but still...and a blood sample was taken for the marrow donation program (I think, anyway..my mind was still trying to figure out what Conway Twitty had to do with bone marrow)...From there, I was led to the back, where they were to take a full "whole blood sample"...or something...all I knew was that I had to fill the bag up before they'd give me my car keys back.

I sat in the mother-of-all Lazy-boy recliners, and had them apply a blood pressure wrap thingamajigger to my arm while I squeezed this rubber ball over and over again...the nurse kept trying to find my veins without luck, and called over another nurse to help...soon, three nurses and a scientist from Nasa working the Doppler radar system were all searching for signs of my body actually containing blood vessels...finally, one was supposedly found, and the needle was inserted...I'm happy to inform you that, yes, I do bleed.

As the bag filled up and I kept squeezing that rubber heart ball, about 10 minutes or so passed...the nurse looked over at my bag while helping another donor, then rushed over to me...another nurse soon joined her, and I calmly said "What the hell's wrong, people!!??!!"...The nurse told me that I'm barely dripping any blood into the bag, and she proceeded to wiggle the needle around inside my arm millimeter by millimeter, trying to locate that blasted vein...After, oh, 45 minutes of that, four nurses were gathered around, all trying to figure out why so little blood was leaving my body...the lead nurse said "Come on, marrow donor..." to me, as if I was just being a little shit and witholding my blood from them...(I can be like that sometimes..)...Apparently those were the magic words to get my blood flowing, because all the nurses let out a loud "Ahhh.." at the same time...I expected them to go smoke cigarettes afterwards.

When finally donating enough blood to fill one measely bag, I got my choice of colorful, festive bandages...green spoke to me, and my arm was wrapped better than any Xmas gift I've ever given anyone (a few of you here can testify to my wrapping abilities, or lack thereof)...the nurse said "there are cookies and juice over there in the cantina for you"--the "cantina" being 5 tables blocked off by partitions, and not a single person dressed up in traditional Mexican garb offering me a marguerita. What a letdown...I got up, and walked over to the cantina...saw a juice machine without any idea how to get the juice out of the machine and into the glasses provided...scanned the place for cookies...then decided I'd just leave and go home.

As I hit the door, a loud chorus of "Sir!!..Stop! Sir!!" flowed behind me, as if I had just started walking out of Walmart with a VCR beneath my jacket...Apparently you're not allowed to leave after donating blood for at least 15 minutes, and these dedicated nurses were serious about that fact...I'm pretty sure I saw at least one pointing a gun at me as I turned around to face them, but that might have just been the lack of blood flowing thru me at the time. So, I returned, half embarrassed and half thinking "There better be some damn good cookies back in the cantina waiting for me.."...I sat down, watched the clock, and ate some damn good cookies washed down with orange juice.

On my way out, I got some lovely parting gifts as well: a calculator, a "calendar" the size of the king of spades...and a sticker with a date to remind me of the next time I need to come back in and experience gobs of nurses mesmerized by how little blood my body truly contains. Oh, and I got this baby, too...it's a blood droplet with a pilgrim's hat on it:



Beautifully festive, I think...

Seriously, though...I'm extremely glad I went thru this...and I'm hoping that at least a few more from this site will think about doing the same. You can give more than money and food around the holidays...*smile*

www.marrow.org




...still recouperating edit.
[This message was edited Wed Nov 19 15:40:06 PST 2003 by wellbeyond]

And to add...you are given several opportunities to decline being a donor along the process from registering to actually laying in a hospital room because they've found a match...so registering with the bone marrow program does not "lock" you into anything.

Nice one.

You deserve and a great big

Could you be anymore wonderful?

Thank you, Camille, Sag, Summer and Sweeny...

in return...

Obviously, a person has to really want to do this and not expect huge kudos, because it doesn't exactly sound like an ego-trip!

Great job, Byron! Your sister would be (I'm sure "IS") proud of you!

i encourage all people to donate blood products. it's incredibly important. i wouldn't be alive if a few hundred people hadn't donated plasma in 1994.

i only wish i could, in turn, donate blood. but i've received so much that i'm not eligible to donate.



kudos for going the extra several miles with the marrow.

AnotherLoverToo said:

No, definitely no parades in your honor when you go visit the blood bank...lol...but they are sincerely appreciative of your time and effort when you arrive. ...

And I thought of Debbie often as I sat in the blood bank...*sigh*...thoughts of her kept it from being a rather lonely experience for me...(that's another story, tho)..

wellbeyond said:

That is the funniest story I've ever heard about blood donations. You should become a journalist.
Thanks for this story.

GermanHottie1981 said:

Thank you...*smile*...I appreciate the acknowledgement.

I would dearly love to give blood but I can't - because I lived in the UK for more than 5 years.

It seems daft, but their reasoning is that because I lived there I might have eaten some beef and might be a vCJD carrier.

"vCJD and Blood Donation
The IBTS does not accept donations from people who have lived for a total of 5 years or more in the UK between 1980 and 1996. This includes living, working or on holidays. By the UK we mean England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man."
http://www.ibts.ie/generi...=7&sID=106

Moo.

What if Prince (for whatever reason) needed a blood transfusion?

Can you say "Who's Jehovah?"

Leave dead blood alone!

You are awesome!!

I know.

AsylumUtopia said:

I was amazed at how many things now disqualify you (or possibly disqualify you) from donating blood...it was almost like, "Have you been outside in the fresh air within the past two months?"...They should be lucky there are still people out there like me who have no life.





...grammar edit.
[This message was edited Thu Nov 20 8:00:19 PST 2003 by wellbeyond]

You, are great WB