the fish epic

I watched my own blood gush from my arm into a little plastic baggie a couple of days ago…. Just in time for the Hallowe’en season.

Last week our communications manager sent out an e-mail with some alarming news. Blood supply in Vancouver and across B.C. are at a critical low. So, for one, try not to get into serious accidents; for two, please give blood.

My heart beating thunderously, I checked over the e-mail again for location and contact information.

My heart was beating thunderously largely because I was very much alive and capable of giving blood. That notion made my heart beat even faster since I’m irrationally afraid of needles. Thus, while I’ve entertained the idea of giving blood for a long time and went as far as making it one of my 101 goals, and it really doesn’t take much to do it, I just… haven’t gotten around to it.

But I couldn’t put it off any longer: I was cornered by my ambition and phobia. So I called myself a nancy, muttered “get over it” and dialed the number, making an appointment for the next day the clinic was open. (I was too chicken to do it on the same day, though that was probably a good thing in retrospect.)

When I arrived, the receptionist knew right away I was a first timer. “You look lost,” she said, with the affection of a nanny who has known me all my life. I filled out forms and had my finger pricked by a lady with purple bangs. A drop of my blood was pipetted into a glass of blue liquid — copper sulphate — to see if my blood sucked or not. It rocked. The lady helpfully reassured me that the pricking was the worst part.

Liar.

After the next lady quizzed me on my age and weight (with utmost kindness, and amidst stories of her working with high school kids in a blood drive) I was sat down in a leather chair. They asked me to furl and unfurl my fingers, to keep the blood moving, I guess. I didn’t look, but after the lady stuck the needle in my arm another lady handed her a clean tissue. I think I squirted a bit there. Fortunately I wore black.

I texted M continually to keep my spirits up. I explained my fright of needles to a nurse and she laid a tissue over my arm so I wouldn’t see it, but it didn’t help — the mere thought of having a needle stuck in my arm made me want to cry. Every squeeze of my hand reminded me of the stiff bit of metal stuck to the inside of my elbow. I pictured in my head what the needle would look like and blinked too late to get rid of the image. The nurses gently touched me on my arm and told me I was doing great, just keep pumping that arm, thank you very much.

Losing blood rapidly probably contributed to further deterioration of my mood, which evolved to the next stage of discomfort — nausea. I tried to ignore it at first. I thought about all the people who needed that blood, how much nausea they felt, called myself a nancy and kept going.

When she checked on me next, I was glad I told her I was feeling nauseous, because within the next five seconds my vision dimmed. “We have a ten!” she yelled, moving toward my needle-bound arm. Two or three other nurses came over. One of them spoke to me as I stared at her and watched her face recede into a dull, colourless flat world. I was losing resolution, I thought amusedly. Need to twiddle with that cable in the back. “Keep your eyes open, look at me,” she said, and it sounded like she was yelling but she didn’t look like she was yelling. I could hardly hear her through the din of some annoying ringing noise just behind my head, yet everything sounded very quiet. “Keep your eyes open,” she said again, and I opened my eyes wide as I could, staring into empty nothing. It wasn’t really black. I suppose that’s what the colour “null” looks like.

I felt towels on my neck and forehead, the wetness pushing back the nausea with every droplet of cold water on my brow. My chair was being tipped back so my heart was lower than my limbs. “You can stop squeezing now,” one of them said. I laughed (or wanted to at least) and stopped moving. The needle was out a while ago. I was probably making a mess on the armrest. “Take a deep breath,” another said, “then blow out slowly through your mouth.” As I did so, I could slowly make out the blur of her face again. I smiled at her when she said there was colour in my face again. She smiled back, a knowing smile that alluded to the hundreds or thousands other fainting nancies she’s met in my chair.

I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see my baggie at the end of the day; they’d snuck it away when I couldn’t see. I do know that the sloshing machine didn’t beep to signal that it was full, though. The lady said that I was very close to the finishing mark, so I’m guessing that I started blacking out at 450mL. Not a small amount of blood — that’s nearly a full pint of blood (taken from a half-pint).

In the mean time, I will repeat the call for donation — if you can give, please do. Unless you have extremely low blood pressure or are miniscule like me, you’ll walk away with nothing but a bruise on your arm (and probably an elevated ego for having helped save the lives of some three people). And if you can’t donate today for whatever reason, donate as soon as you can. You can also donate plasma or platelets if you want to cling close to you haemoglobins. It’s really a heck of a lot simpler than making a monetary donation.