Grimm Week #5

Singing and Donating

    About four months ago my vocal teacher and I both caught COVID-19. To this day we both don't know who passed it to us or even if we gave it to each other. I won't bring up precautions we took because it's uninteresting and not important to the story, but they existed and still do. Connie, my teacher, and I made a pact to donate our plasma together once we knew we were virus free. And so we did. 

    About two weeks ago her and I met up at the Miller-Keystone Blood Center to donate. I had a vague idea of what we were going to go through from the internet, but ultimately was naive to what was about to take place. I found myself nervously filling out the most repetitive questionnaire I've ever taken prior to testing. A lot of the questions were seemed both unnecessary and offensive, but that's besides the point. We then proceeded to the little offices to finalize our paperwork. There was a big packet of medications and other things that would terminate our visit if we had taken them recently. My eyes stopped on an acne medication I take and I instantly told the nurse. She began to void the appointment and called another nurse for help while I sat there feeling like a total failure and embarrassment. Thankfully I looked up the medication and it was actually not the same one I take. The name was longer and the steroid was one hundred times stronger than mine. Saved the day with that one, thank you inter-webs.

    Probably the most hilarious part of the trip happened when the nurses tried to seat my teacher and I in blood donating chairs a mile apart. We called up a week in advance to get an appointment together so Connie was not going to have us separated. I was just chilling in my chair freaking out about the inevitable needle and I hear Connie's nurse tell mine something like "she's not cooperating." Connie was ready to throw a tantrum I think, no, I'm just joking, we would've just donated separately if we had too. Thankfully they moved me to the machine right next to her, it was just a newer one that needed to be cleaned so I had to wait longer.

    The nurses were very, very chatty. They actually called Connie my mother several times before we corrected them. She could be. They hooked us up and we had to pump our blood through the system by squeezing this stress ball. I found it really difficult because my machine wouldn't let me know when my blood was done being extracted. The way the plasma donation works is the blood is taken out and then separated. After a minute or so of extraction the machine then feeds you back the rest of your blood except the plasma of course. Everyone else's machine would beep letting them know they were in a "return," mine, ironically being newer, did not which was more difficult. In between the donating we got a choice of almost any junk food you could imagine because salty, sweet, carb(y) snacks are good for donators to have. We got girl scout cookies right from the fridge and that was everything. Somehow Connie convinced me to let her show the nurses a video of me singing, cause she's a proud "mom" and they loved it, I think. It was really embarrassing for me, but at least it wasn't a bad video.

    After an hour we had finished eating and pumping. I can't say how incredibly rewarding it is to donate. I highly recommend it to anyone who is in good health. If you can't donate blood than the facility also takes money and food donations. We asked, and the nurses said the companies income is mainly from a transfer fee, of the blood they give to hospitals and wherever, which is not much. I have to wait a good few weeks, but I will go back and can't wait for more cookies!