many of you may remember around this time last year how i confessed to you my love of donating blood. all the sterile medical equipment, little beds, colored gauze, cookies and juice. good stuff! so when our employee blood drive was announced i was quick to sign up. (and you earn 3 hours of vacation time, not including the time it takes to give blood. yay!)
so i arrive to give blood this morning after having a filling breakfast of 2 eggwhites, 1/8 cup of fat free cheddar cheese, atop these fab high fiber flat breads that ms. bitchcakes got me. (one morning i will take a picture of this creation because it is deeee-lish. thanks bitchcakes!) anyway, point is, i was well fed. then i got a cup of tea and hopped on a bus to go give the gift of life!
anyway, after being poked and prodded a bit i was questioned about which foreign countries i have visited in the past year. urgh, this could take a while. let's see: bahamas, england, australia, costa rica, staten island. and then the nurse got all up in arms that i went to costa rica, saying that i may have been exposed to malaria. how dare she! first off, all the costa ricans i was in contact with were quite lovely people and none of them seemed even remotely sick. surely, they were not stricken with malaria. i think i would have noticed. and i have to say, i can be accused of many things: being hivey, being an allergic mess, having "girly" issues ... but i do NOT have malaria. i draw the line there.
so after much complaining on my part the nurse goes off to make some calls on my behalf. after a few minutes she returns and says that given the cities i visited in CR, i am clear to give blood. sweet! so then i am poked and prodded all over again. then she tells me that i am anemic. now, i have had low iron in the past, but i eat like a pound of raw spinach a week thanks to weight watchers so i do not see how i could possibly be anemic. also, i recently got about $900 worth of bloodwork done (i know because said results wound up accidentally getting sent to my biological father's house, where i have never ever lived. but that's a whole other story) anyway, i know my blood is good. any sick person would be lucky to have my blood. so she checks again. and sure enough according to her little blood taking machine, my iron is not high enough to donate blood. then she gives me a helpful sheet telling me that tea and coffee often block the absorption of iron. damn that lite latte i got from dunkin donuts yesterday! (made with skim milk and splenda! only 70 calories!)
so there you have it dear blog readers ... here i sit possibly with malaria and/or anemia ... every day i am not quarantined off from the rest of society is a good day.
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4 comments:
How dare they not accept your awesome blood! Does this mean you don't even get the 3 hour credit because your donation was refused?
I'm glad you're enjoying those flat bread thingys. Aren't they awesome? So delicious and versatile. I used one today to make a 'Better n' Peanut Butter and Agave' sandwich.
no! i didn't get the 3 hours of vacation time because i did not successfully donate blood! grrrrr.
what is "better n' peanut butter?" i am intrigued.
It's a super low fat peanut butter. They sell it at Trader Joe's:
http://www.betternpeanutbutter.com/
Hey! (It's Sherry.)
I've made two appointments to donate blood. The first one went fine -- I think I had a teryaki chicken wrap beforehand -- but the second time I couldn't because the iron level in my blood was one-tenth off what it should have been. Really, they want you to eat a cow before you donate, and here I am, thinking I was donating "healthy" blood by eating a spinach salad before my appointment!
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