Happier than Dracula Volunteering at a Blood Drive

Because I'm obsessed with TVD.

My mother and I are both easily amused. We love the movie Zoolander, like all the awesome new toys for kids, and are prone to having laughing fits in public places (typically department stores for my mother, and really just about anywhere for me). I’ve always considered this a positive trait. When things aren’t great, it helps to be easily amused. Sure, awesome spring rolls, mini gummy bears, and my favorite commercial may only provide momentary happiness, but you take what you can get.

Yesterday I was just describing my favorite commercial to a friend. It’s the Geico commercial with the blood drive. And aptly enough, it reminded me that today is World Blood Donor Day, which I decided I want to talk about.

I have very complicated emotions around donating blood. I think it’s a great thing to do. While I appreciate when everyone bands together and donates after some sort of disaster leaves the banks a little low, I am mildly annoyed that more people don’t donate more often. My friend Erin talked last year about being a good citizen. Well at some point I’m going to take that a step further to just being a good person, and I think donating blood and other such things is tied to that.

Now, having just said that, I must confess I haven’t donated blood in YEARS.

I used to donate fairly regularly. I actually had two separate donor cards as I donated both at home and in a different area when I was at college. I was never as awesome as my friend Kevin and asked to donate extra amounts at once, but that’s probably to be expected as I’m tinier and certainly not the healthiest person in the world.

Donating blood for me is very similar to how some people feel about the gym. I hated the experience, but I liked feeling good about it afterwards. Oh, and how I hated the experience. It’s not just the whole “there’s-a-freaking-needle-in-your-arm-thing” (although I don’t like needles, and sometimes they wouldn’t cover it so I’d be sitting there staring at this needle poking out of my arm… ick). It took FOREVER and a half. Seriously. I’m not even talking about the lines. Sometimes I’d go with other people. We’d all be in the same place in line. We’d all make it onto the cots around the same time. They’d finish, and get to go have a snack. I’d have to sit there and watch until finally 10-20 minutes later I was done. This is not even an exaggeration. My blood apparently refused to fill the bag at a normal rate.

Luckily it’s hardly ever the same workers, so they didn’t realize the problem was me. They kept checking the bag, and the line, convinced something was broken. I just sat there and looked innocent.

I prepped for days in order to give blood. Since sometimes I had some trouble passing the anemia test, before a blood drive I’d chow down on vitamins and extra meat. I’d drink fluids out the wazoo. I made sure I had clothing that either exposed my arms or was easy to move out of the way.

Then during college I ran into my first serious issue. I was giving blood and it was actually going pretty quickly. It looked like I might even be done near normal person time. I was sitting there pretty thrilled with myself, when all of a sudden I realized I was about to pass out. I was hot, my vision was blackening, and there was a loud buzzing in my ears. I tried to alert the person and I suppose I was successful, but I couldn’t tell you what I said because everything seemed to slow and my words were incomprehensible.

A bit later, I woke up. Sure enough I had passed out. Not afterwards, mind you. Not walking over to the snack station. Nope, lying there in the midst of giving blood I had passed out. Even better, apparently I hadn’t woken up right away. No, apparently several minutes and quite a lot of cold water was involved before they could get me conscious. My person was totally freaked out. They basically told me they couldn’t use my blood to donate but instead would use it for testing purposes, because something had to be wrong with me.

It’s unclear what exactly the first issue was. After this experience I felt horrible for a few days. I almost passed out again every time I had to go to one of my classes on the 4^th floor. I slept like mad. I didn’t really feel like myself again until about a month later, and eventually the decision was I had some sort of virus.

So a few months later I tried giving blood again.

Now since we had decided I was sick for the last fiasco, I was mildly nervous but not too bad. My blood was going slow as usual which seemed like a good sign. Then wouldn’t you know it, I started getting dizzy, losing vision, and became crazy hot. Luckily this time my person was able to spin me around and start holding cold cloths to my face before I actually passed out. It was a close thing. And again, this was during the donation process, not afterwards. This time there was a new fun problem as well. As I started to feel better, they realized no new blood was going into the bag. Apparently my blood clotted in the tube or something and they couldn’t get anymore out.

I decided to give it one more attempt when I was back home. Granted I didn’t actually pass out, but it took somewhere between a half hour and forty minutes before they gave up on getting a full bag of blood out of me, and I could barely walk for the rest of the day.

Sooooo…… I’m kinda nervous to try again.

It’s been years since these experiences, and we all know I’m much healthier now! I’m eating somewhat better, and I jazzercise more than a sane person probably should. Considering I’m 0+ (for those not in the know, people with 0- are more awesome than me, but I out-awesome everyone else) I feel like it’s my duty to try again. But to be safe I probably shouldn’t drive myself there, and being me, I don’t really want to ask someone else to drive me either.

You can see why I have unresolved issues over this. I want to donate, but I don’t want to be half-dead because of it. I want to encourage people to donate since it’s World Blood Donor Day, but that seems hypocritical. Maybe I’ll celebrate by just watching my favorite commercial again. Every time it finally reveals the vampire volunteer I just cackle. Ahh… good times.