Adventures in Blood?

First of all, let us apologize for the dull lives we've been living lately. I know you all check this blog every 5 minutes hoping to read about our latest and greatest adventure. It's been a lot of 5 minutes in between posts lately hasn't it? Well, we'll try to fix that (but I give no promises). Now, onto our latest adventure:

This one only involves me. It happened last night while I was donating blood. Great place to have an adventure, right? Well, everything started out normal enough, but that soon changed. When they were screening my blood, the woman doing it was very surprised at my high hemoglobin count. I asked her if it was a bad thing, but she never really answered my question. She just said something like, "Well, usually for males it's between 14 and 17 and yours it at 18 point [something]." (I don't remember the exact number) I didn't ask any further questions about it though. She then asked me if I wanted to do the Double Red Cell Donation or whatever she called it. I thought, "sure, why not?" After I agreed to it, she said something like, "that'll help with your high hemoglobin count." I probably should have asked again about it, but I didn't.

Then came the time to lay down and get poked with the needle. I'm never really worried about this part because the last 6 or 7 times I've given blood they've always complimented me on my veins. I am not kidding - one guy said they were like "garden hoses." So, she sticks the needle in. No big deal. Then I feel her moving it around some. I've heard horror stories about vein misses and moving the needle around. This was getting me a little nervous, but it wasn't too bad. After moving it a little more she tells me, "Sorry, it's like right next to the vein." She then calls over someone to help her, and all 3 of us become very happy when the needle makes it into my vein.

So, I'm just squeezing away on the ball, and I hear some kind of despair from the woman working with me. She calls over for help again and asks the other woman to grab a towel or something. I'm not sure what's going on, but I look over, and it looks like one of the tubes into a bag ripped or something. There was someone I knew laying across the way from me and he asked me jokingly why I was bleeding all over the place. There must have been some blood on the floor. It wouldn't have been the first time I've bled all over a basketball court. But I digress. She apologized for my blood getting out, and I couldn't help but say, "as long as I get to keep most of my blood, I think I'll be ok." They then got it sealed back up, she changed her bloody gloves, and we were back in business.

Or so we thought. The machine that's doing the double red cell thing is beeping a lot, and the woman working with me is getting more and more frustrated. She keeps telling me to do really big squeezes and I'm squeezing all I can. And still it beeps and still she's frustrated. She asks me to try squeezing one more time and "to have a prayer in my heart." Well, I guess I wasn't faithful enough, because it beeped once again and she defeatingly announced that we were done. I don't think I donated very much, but she did say that they got some of my blood, so it wasn't a complete waste.

That was the last of my adventures. I got some good cookies and some good water and completed my little blood donating adventure. All in all, it really wasn't that bad. It was just one turn of bad luck after another. I'm happy to report that I still have blood and that I'm still very much alive.