February 18, 2013

• Like a Stuck Pig

  Monday being the beginners’ judo, and there not being another beginners’ class until Thursday, I scheduled my third blood donation for Tuesday (today).

  I’m not particularly squeamish about needles, but all I can say is that the needles they use to take blood are fucking huge.  I don’t think it’d be exaggerating if I compared it to the guage of a wire coat hanger.  Now just imagine sticking that coat hanger up one of your veins.

   

  It does “pinch” a bit, but what the hell, why not.  When I was younger, I used not donate blood.  Partly, when I was in early college, I probably wasn’t physically fit to give blood.  When I was in late college and early undergrad, I was so obssessed with training that my mentality was “I had to work to make this blood, I don’t think I need to share it.  It’s too much of a setback for me.”  Whether or not there’s any medical justification to that mentality, go figure.

  By the time I’d been working years in healthcare after finishing my undergrad degree, I attempted to donate blood a couple of times in Montreal.  The problem was that I could never quite get it scheduled properly– the closest blood donor clinic was a temporary one in Alexis Nihon (accross the street from the Montreal Children’s Hospital, where I worked) and no matter how many times I went during lunch breaks, the whole process of paperwork and waiting time never got a needle in me before my hour (and sometimes even hour and a half) lunch break was over. I know a lot of people have given blood downtown and haven’t had that problem, but man– it was enough of a hassle that after the second or third failed attempt, I just got fed up and regressed to not bothering.  I tried.

   

  When I came to Australia, it was CM’s idea once that we should.  Well actually, she went, I went with her, and just decided to do it since I was in the clinic anyhow.  To my surprise? WIth nothing but my passport, I was in and out in less than an hour, even having done all my paperwork from scratch.  How’s that for a streamlined process?  Today, the whole process took a bit less than an hour, and it would’ve been even faster if it weren’t for me recently being in Canada for [Zanshin]‘s wedding (apparently, Canada is on the watch list for West Nile virus), my distant history in Korea (considered a maleria alert country) and my recent visit to a general practitioner to get a new eczema cream.  I mean, considering how ‘complicated’ I am, under one hour is pretty damn good, I think.  I guess it helps that I have easy veins, and that when punctured, I bleed like a stuck pig– I don’t know how big those bags are, but from start to finish today took me around 5 minutes only, which I’m told is pretty damned fast.  I don’t know if that’s awesome or inconvenient– I guess it depends on the scenario.  If life were a first person or third person shooter, it’d be like playing on insane where I’d bleed out almost immediately on a down!

   

  CM’s opinion is that she feels she has some sort of a responsibility as a doctor-to-be to give blood, otherwise it would make her hippocritical.  I don’t necessarily agree– healthcare people give shitloads of years off their life, and by that I don’t mean the time in hopsitals, I mean the time lost in stress and caring– but CM, on the whole, is a lot more generous a person than I am.  If I was a doctor, I don’t know if I would give blood.

   

  Be that as it may, and it has nothing to do with me having worked in healthcare, I was an educator for a brief stint, and I did work with children.  I also consider myself a martial artist.  And I have people I care about.  And life experience has taught me that things are fragile, and shit happens.  After judo yesterday, I hurt one heel, one knee, and my neck– what if one day, I’m unlucky enough to need a blood transfusion?  I figure that, even benevolence aside, I should buy some karmic insurance by investing some blood now.  It’s not benevolence– it’s pure selfishness, to have some feeling that I paid for whatever blood I need, and whatever those I care about need.

   

  On the whole, it feels like a more productive morning than just lying in bed or watching television.

  • 10:44 pm
  • 1 Comment