On Mondays and Wednesdays my sister and I get to spend some quality time together as we wait for our respective next classes to commence. Today is not Monday, but it is, if you noticed, Wednesday. Thus, being released from my previous class a bit earlier than she, I found myself waiting for my baby carrot sister, and while I was waiting at our previously determined meeting spot I was finagled into donating blood.
Ok, so maybe “finagled” is the incorrect word for the situation. They asked, and then told me there was no line at this point, and seeing no baby carrot sister in sight, and thus having time to kill, and blood in my veins, and having given blood at least eight times in the past, I said: “Sure.” One pink form, one laughter inducing questionnaire, one pinprick, and one comment about the largeness and availability of the vein in my right arm later, and I was seated comfortably in a large blue chair chatting with my puncturer, watching the blood pouring forth from the very bowels of my being steadily filing a large plastic bag hanging from my chair. And by “chatting” I mean he was telling me his life story, which worked out nicely for me because it kept me efficiently distracted from the needle stuck in my arm and bag of blood attached to that needle, and after all I was a captive audience, what with the whole needle and bag strapped to my arm scenario.
At this point I should also mention that I had met up with my baby carrot sister and convinced her to donate blood. For the first time ever. “It’s a not a big deal at all,” I heard myself confidently reassure her after she admitted her trepidation at leaving the building with a pint less of her own red stuff. Now there she sat, in the large blue chair next to me, and we smiled, and chatted, as I remembered to squeeze the red foam squeezy thingy in my hand every five seconds, as instructed.
Moments later I made my second big mistake of the day, the first big mistake being me cheerfully suggesting my sister and I donate blood on our lunch breaks, after I had consumed not the most sufficient of breakfasts for such a task. But back to the second big mistake. I looked over at my sister, and chose not to look away, as her puncturer (a friendly woman with dark hair and braces) stuck the needle into the vein in her right arm, simultaneously squirting a little spurt of dark red blood onto my sister’s right arm. Instantly I stopped my deep breathing and felt myself getting A. a little grossed out and B. protective, because hey! that’s my baby carrot sister’s blood, and you be careful with that needle, lady.
Then, after my sister appeared to be doing just fine, I continued with the big mistake making, and looked down at my own bag, now almost full to the brim with my own dark red blood. A puncturer who was not my puncturer noticed my blood-brimming bag and told me to stop squeezing my red squeezy thingy. I watched him clamp (why wasn’t I just sitting there with my eyes closed, WHY?) the bag and then instantly felt the pulse resonating from within the punctured vein as if it were careening through my right and left earlobes. I could hear my heart beat, and it was beating rather quickly.
Right after the clamping of the bag I remember feeling overly nauseous and extremely dizzy at the same time; even stronger than both of these simultaneous sensations I felt the worried. I was worried that I was going to throw-up all over my blue chair with me still sitting in it, and that all of these people would see me cry, because I can’t throw-up and not cry, I’ve tried, and the only person in the room that understood how much I disliked throwing up was sitting right next to me, but she couldn’t do anything because she had a needle jammed in her arm, and besides, I’m the big sister who is supposed to be showing her little sister that giving blood is not a big deal at all.
I also remember thinking that I couldn’t decide whether I should tell my puncturer that I was feeling dizzy or that I was feeling as if I might lose my Cheerios. Which was more important? And maybe I’m just imaging that I’m feeling sick, and hey, why is the room spinning and darkening right now?
What I don’t remember is me turning three shades of white — reserving the palest hue for my lips — breaking into a cold sweat, my left shoe falling off, my head falling to my chest, and me losing consciousness. I also don’t remember ultimately deciding that I would phrase my concern about my simultaneous dizziness and nausea in the whispered statement: “I don’t feel well,” but apparently I did, and when my puncturer told me that’s what I muttered I instantly felt proud because I had used the word “well” instead of “good,” proving that even as I am passing out I strive to be grammatically correct, because why else do we have grammar if not to be used in these types of defining moments when one’s use of grammar is more important than even one’s consciousness?
I was only out for a manner of seconds–ten to fifteen at most–but I felt as if I had been asleep for days, and wherever I went during those ten seconds was peaceful and dark and my stomach didn’t hurt and I didn’t feel dizzy and I couldn’t tell my body temperature had risen dreadfully high and I was currently dripping with sweat. And I could have sworn that I heard a Dido song playing loudly somewhere in the background of my dark cozy place.
The next thing I do remember involves hearing my name shouted loudly to me, and feeling people touching me, and wondering: Am I upside down right now? Why is everyone YELLING at me; I’m right HERE.
I could also tell there was something cold on my neck and forehead. My initial reaction to my coming to was to feel irritated and grumpy that these voices — and whomever they belonged to — were disrupting my cozy dream-state, and didn’t they know I was sleeping? I also had the thought creeping in from somewhere in the distance that I was giving blood, but that felt like days ago, so I dismissed it as silly. Then I realized I was upside down, or at least titled dramatically in that direction because I HAD PASSED OUT, HOW EMBARRASSING, and thus, blood needed to reach the cranial area, STAT.
At this point I felt I had a distinct decision to make. I could freak out; I knew there was a part of me that was ready to do so, and that I could even bring the tears if I wasn’t careful, because although my brain no longer felt as if it were floating somewhere in another dimension, I still felt so tired, and I couldn’t open my eyes at all to stare into the faces of those concerned puncturers turned nurses who had assembled around me, in what, judging from their voices, was a semi-circle. Or, I could relax, and not freak out. In the end I went with the latter option, ultimately deciding I didn’t have the energy to freak out, and what good would it do me anyway? I already looked like a complete moron. And after all, this whole giving blood thing: so NOT a big deal!
So, although I still really couldn’t open my eyes, I decided I could say something, you know, to let them know I was alive, and then maybe they would stop talking so loud and asking so many questions. So I said the first thing I could think to say, and it came out as, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that,” after which came a few chuckles and the placing of the lost shoe back upon my left foot.
But my plain failed because the lady asking the questions didn’t stop asking them. In fact, she started asking them more frequently, because I had let it be known that I could respond to them. What she didn’t seem to understand was that the part of my brain that was able to understand bodily sensations and then analyze those sensations, and then transfer them to sentence form from my brain to my mouth, and thus verbally out to her, was an ability that felt still quite severed and fuzzy.
So when she asked me how I was feeling, I muttered something that sounded a lot like “Ummm,” my eyes still closed tightly. “How does your tummy feel?” she asked. “Umm,” I said again and then my mouth went dry and I thought: If she were my mom she would know not to ask that question because my mom knows that I only get queasier if you make me analyze to what extent I am feeling queasy.
Finally I heard my sister’s voice from the myriad other sound waves circulating around me, and I opened my eyes to look at her still sitting next to me. And I smiled because I realized how ironic this situation was, and how silly I must have looked, and how downright crummy I felt, and I giggled because, for some reason, all of that was moderately amusing to me at the time.
Maybe I laughed because I really don’t pass out. As in, I have never passed out in my entire life. I’ve never even come close, especially while donating blood. I have of course seen plenty of people do it, but those people were usually the frail-looking, excruciatingly thin girls wearing pink blouses. Girls whom I had always secretly felt an underlying pity for, because look at that poor little girl in the pink blouse, she is having to mock-faint to hide the fact that she’s just scared of giving a little blood; isn’t that sad?
(Yes, there is a part of me that realizes I probably deserved to lose consciousness with a needle in my arm, in front of a moderately sized crowd, just for at some point thinking thoughts like those.)
Even though I’m still feeling a bit weak, and as if I am going to have to force myself to drink so much water today that I will probably spend the rest of the day in the bathroom, and my head hurts a bit, it was, overall, quite an interesting, and definitely humbling experience. And if it wouldn’t seem like such a strange suggestion, I would probably encourage everyone to pass out at least once during their lifetime, if only to experience the comfy cozy dream-place that apparently one goes to when one loses consciousness. Besides, it makes for a semi-interesting story.
Well, in theory anyway.
I also think they should create a new sticker for the post-donation sticker baskets. One that reads like a short letter addressed to a recipient of donated blood, and says something like:
Dear Receiver Of My Blood,
I just passed out while donating my blood to you. So you best be appreciating it, OK? Oh, and I caught you this delicious bass.