Giving blood was always a thing for some of my family. My grandpa belonged to the hundred gallon club. My mom did, too. Okay, my brother says it couldn’t possibly be a “hundred gallons.” Ten gallons maybe? Every chance they had, they went to Ball Memorial Hospital in our hometown to give blood.
Following suit, I did, too. Once I even took my students to my high school’s blood drive to take notes for a process-analysis writing assignment while I donated. One of the sophomores ended up on the floor. Oops!
I stopped giving blood for awhile after that.
Then my grandpa fell and was taken to the hospital. After visiting him, I decided that I should donate a pint in his honor.
Reclining on a gurney with a tech taking my blood pressure, I waited for my chance to help anyone who needed O positive. That was in the days when actual nurses put a stethoscope on your arm and watched the gauge as they simultaneously released air pressure in the cuff through its bulb. No techs with six weeks of training, no electronic machines.
Then the young woman placed her fingers on my wrist. Her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes looked askance. She readjusted her finger placement. Dissatisfied, she took her stethoscope and placed it on my chest. “Uhh.. “ she started, but then stopped. She wound her stethoscope up her hand. “Just a sec,” she said as she walked away.
That got my attention.
What was happening? “Oh well, at least I know I have a pulse,” I comforted myself.
She came back with an older woman— an experienced nurse. I could tell by her brusque manner. She didn’t make eye contact, but took my wrist and felt my pulse.
Yep. I had one.
Then she unwound her own stethoscope from around her neck and put the cold disk on my chest. She moved it to the other side.
“We’ll be back,” she announced.
Now they both had my attention. What in the world was happening?
In a moment they both were back with a young, blond doctor in tow. He smiled at me. “Let’s take a listen,” he said, as he repeated the nurse’s action. His forehead wrinkled, too.
“You need to see your doctor as soon as possible,” he advised.
“What? Why?” Now I knew my heart rate and my blood pressure were rising.
“Your heartbeat is irregular. You can’t give blood today.” He threw his stethoscope around his neck and left me climbing off the gurney and wondering if I would make it to the car.
Yeah.
That stopped my blood-borne beneficence. At least for a while.
Several years later, after I’d tamed most of my stressors and stopped drinking so much coffee, I resumed my donations.
Two weeks ago, I gave blood for the fifth time this year.
I should have hoarded it.
I’d been all over town and in nearby towns, too, attending blood drives in schools, day care centers, churches and businesses. I was proud of myself for being able to help people who’d been in accidents or surgery and needed my type.
This time I was in a building at the county fairgrounds. I arrived a little early for my afternoon appointment, but the workers were running late. I settled on a folding chair and watched two donors who were hooked up to large machines, presumably giving plasma. That’s never been my thing. I don’t mind giving the blood, but I’m not so keen on it being processed and then put back in me, thank you very much.
When my name was finally called, I went over to the intake area. A young woman whose arms were covered with flower tattoos kept up a chattery monologue. She wanted to know if I had plans for the day, what books I’d been reading, and what flowers were in bloom in my garden. I barely had a chance to answer before she was on to another topic.
I didn’t mind a little conversation, but I did wish she would get on with it. I had other things on my to do list that day.
She ran through a long list of questions, even though I’d completed the pre-check and had my QR code pulled up on my phone, ready to scan. Then she swabbed my finger for the pin prick, chattering away the whole time.
“Oh!” she said. “Looks like your hemoglobin is low.”
“What’s that?” I asked, scouring my mind for that seventh-grade science term.
“It’s your iron. You’re at 11.7. It needs to be 12 to donate.”
“Hmmm …” I was baffled. “I’ve never been anemic. Not even when I was pregnant.”
“Well, hon, you’ve got two options: you can just not give today, or we can retest you.”
I must’ve frowned. How could my iron level change with another test?
“Sometimes the test is wrong.” she said, reading my face.
I shrugged. “I feel okay. Test again.”
She did, still babbling as she squeezed the blood up my finger and into a tiny pipette embedded in a plastic chip.
She inserted the chip into the machine and proclaimed, “You’re good.12.2!”
I watched her slide in the needle and hook me up to the tube and bag. I admit that I pride myself on being able to watch the trough-shaped needle slide in and seeing how fast I can fill the bag when I give blood. Once a nurse commented on my fast blood, and I took it as a compliment- a badge of honor, somehow. I sat for about ten minutes, sipping room temperature water and squeezing my fist every several seconds.
When a bell sounded notifying them that I was finished, another worker stripped the tubes clean and filled a few test tubes, scanning them with the phone on the nearby table. She set the bag of dark red blood on the gurney beside my legs. It looked like a quart Ziplock bag filled with thickened raspberry sauce.
That’s a lot of blood, I thought. My blood.
Funny how I’d never been bothered by that before.
Released to the post-donation area, I chose a t-shirt with something Tetris on the front, a granola bar with chocolate and nuts and a tiny juice box. I sat down to consume the snacks and then headed to the parking lot.
By the time I got to the grocery store, I was feeling a little floaty. Not dizzy exactly, but like I wasn’t fully participating in the moment. I chatted for a moment when I ran into my sister-in-law, but something felt off. I could barely muster a smile.
Once home, I lay down on the couch. “Sorry, babe. I’m wiped,” I told my husband. And so I lay there for the rest of the evening, fading in and out of wakefulness, until I huffed and puffed upstairs at bedtime.
The next day wasn’t much better. I lounged around between doing some computer work for an upcoming workshop. And even that felt like I was having to think too hard.
What was happening? I was making simple mistakes in just transferring my detailed plans to the slide shows. Had I already covered this topic? Why didn’t the timing match? It was all too frustrating!
I gave up and went to bed early.
But even that didn’t help. I was cold. Then hot. My legs had the heebie jeebies. And I was getting a headache.
Might as well get up and read, I thought. Beside the chair was a book about old Southern remedies I’d been reading for my novel research. I turned to the section about spring tonics. Two of the recipes called for boiling a nail! A nail! For iron?
Slowly in those wee hours, my mind put two and two together. Is that what I had? Iron poor blood? Wasn’t that what Geritol used to advertise for OLD people when I was a kid?
I picked up my phone and opened my medical app to make an appointment for Tuesday.
Long story short, the NP suspected I was anemic. All the symptoms were there: fatigue, headaches, dizziness, even my inner eyelids were pale! Her nurse drew more blood, and in another day, her suspicions were confirmed.
And then some.
She was hopping mad. “I don’t know why they tell people they can give blood so often,” she fumed. “And that tech should not have let you give when your iron was low to begin with.”
“Well, I did agree,’ I told her, feeling stupid. What was I thinking in letting her test me again? My gut told me a second test was weird.
But I thought the blood drive tech knew more than I did about blood and iron. I mean, she’d been trained, right?
I should’ve listened to my hunch. But no, I had to do the right thing. Had to fill that bag so quickly, as if it were some kind of contest.
My NP interrupted my self scolding. “It’ll take you a year to build back up your reserves,” she said.
My eyes and mouth hung open in disbelief. “A YEAR? How am I going to function next week when I have to lead a three-week workshop?”
“I know,” she said, giving me a sympathetic look.
Then she ran me through a lengthy science lesson about how red blood cells are made and how they travel and why my red cells were limited in number, misshapen, and in low reserve and why my white blood cells were overtaxed. She told me my brain and my heart weren’t getting enough oxygen. I tried to take some notes, but my mind was muddled.
She put me on iron supplements every other evening and advised an iron-rich diet with Vitamin C. “No more donations for you,” she announced.
Once home, I began researching, trying to understand what I needed to eat and what I needed to avoid. It all made sense now: my sweating so much after walking with a friend; my trouble concentrating when I was reading; even my heebie jeebies at night.
And so… my summer began.
Although I had workshop plans to finalize, materials to create and trips to plan, I had another more important task to complete before I could do anything else: cancel my next blood donation appointment.
And when the email came a couple of weeks later, notifying me that my pint of blood had helped someone in Fort Wayne, I could only shake my head ruefully. “That won’t be happening again anytime soon.”
So now, I’m taking my supplements and eating lots of Swiss chard and iron fortified Multi Grain Cheerios and a hamburger more often than usual.
And I’m on the lookout for some other club to join … once I have the energy.
