Today there was a blood drive in the office park where I work.
I have been meaning to donate blood for awhile. My blood type is O negative, which anyone can receive. (I'm such a giver.) Once my name gets on that blood donation list, not a couple weeks will go by without a phone call reminding me that they would like my blood. However, I have spent the last year, since moving to Kentucky, not donating blood. I just didn't do it. However, I finally decided that, since I could do it on work time, I would go ahead and donate the blood.
So I went down with a co-worker of mine to the bus they had brought and parked in the middle of our office park. That's right, a blood bus. In the back they had little booths (kinda like catholic confessional booths) where you'd do the interviews and they'd poke your finger, and then towards the front they had the beds on either side of the bus so you could donate using either arm. A rather innovative idea, the blood bus. I'm a big fan.
My favorite part of the blood donation interview is when they find out I have been outside of the United States and Canada in the past three years. "Well, where have you been?" "Where haven't I been!" I respond, and then start to name all the different countries where Torrie and I went backpacking just over two years ago. This year I got to name the countries that we cruised to, after which I got some bad news:
"I'm really sorry sir, I want to take your blood, but unfortunately, Honduras is a malaria risk zone. You cannot donate blood for one year."
Sad! My dream of a kentucky blood donor shirt, dashed to pieces! I had so been looking forward to those cookies, and I could have said that I donated blood in a blood bus!
A half hour later, I received the worst news of not being able to donate blood.
Turns out, you can get half a day of leave time for giving blood. You know, to make sure that you have fully recovered. Since I don't have a lot going on today, I could have been out of here after lunch time.
Man! And now I have to wait until at least next June until I can take advantage of that. Dumb Honduras. Dumb Malaria. I remember marvelling, while I was in Honduras, at the lack of mosquitoes on the island where we were.
Oh well. At least I had time (and material) to write in my blog today :)
1 comment:
Bummer. The only time I was shut out was because the stupid blood tech stuck the needle into a valve and couldn't figure out why there wasn't any blood coming out.
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