Today's Good Deed

Everyone, or at least most of us, want to know that we do good things, things that make us feel better about ourselves, right? Over the years I have been a sporadic blood donor, although always through the Red Cross. Never sold the stuff, that just has a bit of a need-money-for-drugs-and-living-under-the-overpass unsavory quality to it. Since I have been at my current job, my boss has been organizing quarterly platelet donations. Today was my 4th platelet donation. We always do it on a Friday before work, and our CEO lets us get paid for it. He is a really nice guy.

Here is what the place looks like:

They were disturbingly interested in the 3-hour trip into Mexico that BS & I made 2 summers ago. The tech was new and had to pull out her world atlas to get the exact name of the town we went to. The fact that I had done this 3 times before meant nothing. She had to have the name. of. that. town!!! (ps, it was Mexacali in Baja) It is very important to know if I was bitten by any malaria-infested mosquitoes while I was there. Not to mention the need to know if I had any wild sex with an HIV-infected African when we were in Uganda 24 years ago!

My initial blood-letting...

The place is pretty noisy - the chug-chug-chug of the machines as they suck out all your blood and whizz it through the separator. Here's mine...

They always tell you you can take a nap if you want, since a single donation takes 45-50 minutes. But noooooooo, how can you when there is so much noise and you have to squeeze a little stress ball every few seconds. This is my boss squeezing her balls (heh).

The heating pad makes more blood gush out. Oh oh, and whatever they inject to prevent clots makes your lips tingle. Very odd feeling, tingling lips (that sounds a little dirty).

Have you ever seen platelets? They look like a bag o' pee. Here's mine...

When it is over, we get juice & cookies. That alone would make it worth it, I know, but since we do it as a group, we also get a $10 gift card to Panera. Whoo-hoo. Lunch. Plus, I saved a life today. Doesn't get better than that.