The dogs barked and barked and barked, only instead of barking at the window, they barked at the door and then they ran outside, which is a little unusual for them. It was a bit early for the mailman but miracles do happen, so I went to the door and a shaky hand was holding this right in front of my face.
The old woman looked terrified that I might sic all those dogs on her so she kind of threw her brochure at me and hurried down the driveway. (I love that Jesus is wearing flip flops!)
This was the second time this morning that I had been shunned, with a look of terror.
I had an appointment to donate blood at 9:30 and was fairly confident that I would pass the hemoglobin test this time, and I did...with flying colors (red, of course). That cleared the way for blood donation and we went out into the donating part of Blood Source, where she handed me over to a young woman I hadn't seen before. I suspected she was new because she must have taken 10 minutes getting ready for the needle stick. She prodded the vein they always use for at least 3 minutes, marked it with a pen and then got her bags all ready, checking a list as she went along.
Finally came the time to stick the needle. This is never ever a problem for me. She stuck it right where she'd marked, but nothing happened (except, of course, that the needle went in). No blood. She began to move the needle around all over the place but got no blood. She was getting nervous. Finally she went to get someone to help her. The other woman was able to get the blood flowing, but very slowly, and with clots because, she said, they had been mucking around in the vein for so long.
Nothing left to do but remove the needle, bandage the arm and try the other arm. More poking and proding (this time by the more experienced phlebotomist) and finally got the blood flowing all right. It had taken about 20 minutes to get it started and, by the clock, it took me 8 minutes to fill the bag. My other arm was bandaged.
I was then directed to the food area. The quality of food has gone waaaay down, in this economic downturn. No more donuts, only a couple of snack choices and they were almost out of bottled water. But I had a snack and then went to Save Mart to get food for our high tea tomorroow. (This is going to be the most expensive non-royal high tea in the history of high teas, I think!)
When I got to the check-out stand I pushed all of my food to the front of the belt, leaving lots of space for the person behind me. the woman left at least a foot, if not more, between her food and mine and she stood as far from the belt as she could, leaning over to place her food on the belt and leaving a shopping cart's distance between her body and mine. I couldn't figure out why and turned around to look at her, a look of shock on her face as I did so.
That's when I realized I looked like this...
...and she probably didn't want to catch whatever horrible communicable disease I must have!
However, when BloodSource "does" something to you (squirt you with your own blood, keep you waiting too long, or dig around in your arms too long), they give you a free t-shirt, so I now have a new t-shirt, I've donated blood, and I'm ready to get started baking for the tea tomorrow.
A fairly decent list of accomplishments for 2-1/2 hours of my time.
1 comment:
A far cry from when I worked for (and donated to) the Red Cross. First, a phlebotomist got only one try at you. If it didn't work, they gave you credit for a donation anyhow. (Watch out for hematomas the next day.)
RC blood drives were staffed by volunteers, except for the nurses and techs. When the volunteers didn't think the snacks were good enough, they would go out and buy their own!
Donors always complained that our food wasn't a healthy choice -- by someone's choice. Doughnuts were abolished in favor of of energy bars or something.
But they won't accept me any more, so I don't care.
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