One and a Half Pints

This is a very trivial story, but it's a cute one so I wanted to share it.


Every eight weeks or so, our company holds a blood drive with the American Red Cross. I  have been an avid blood donor for as long as I could give blood and I have tried on numerous occasions to try to get Alex to donate blood with me.

So, when a blood drive was scheduled for June 19th, I pulled the "It's our anniversary babe... you can donate blood as my anniversary gift" card. It did not work at first, but I was persistent and called him the day before the blood drive to sign him up.
 "What time do you want to give blood tomorrow?"..
"..Uhh... what?..."
"You heard me... they have these open slots for 10:20, noon, one, etc.. Ooh, how about 10:20 then you can go on your break and eat afterward."
"Oooooooooooook"


So the day of, we're getting ready for work... make sure that we have a good breakfast... even send Alex on his way with some coffee. I don't generally go into work until 11am, so I stayed home and finished up and he went on his way. There were a couple of times while I was getting ready when I was thinking to myself, I hope he's ok.. I hope he doesn't get sick or anything. Now, this may have been some sort of psychic connection or it could just be a memory of the last time Alex gave blood and nearly fainted... hard to say which one it is, but I digress.

I stroll into work about 11am and am getting ready to begin working when Alex IMs me on our GoogleChat. He says, "Did you talk to Amy? I don't know which dept she's in but she said she was going to talk to you."
"No, I don't know who you're talking about. Why? What's wrong?"
"Well, she walked me back from the blood drive because I fainted."
"OMG I KNEW IT! I knew something was going on!"
"How did you know?"
"I JUST KNEW"

I eventually did talk to this Amy person... turns out it's the Amy that works in my dept. Turns out she was giving blood at the same time as him and was sooo freaked out when he fainted, she nearly jumped up to help him until she realized she also had a needle in her arm. Alex was able to get about half a pint out of him before this incident when they took the needle out without sterile procedure and his blood became contaminated. Half a pint of contaminated blood. He ate a bagel and went on his way. He was fine, by the way, just a little freaked out.

My appointment was at 12:20pm and the only thing I was really worried about was whether or not my iron was going to be low that day. After the initial process, I'm sitting on the cot where they draw your blood and I ask the nurse if she remembers the guy who fainted earlier and told her that he is my boy... she recounted his story from her perspective and then we went on our way.
Right arm is my best arm, but she has a difficult time finding my vein. It begins to hurt like no other time I've given blood... I am making a lot of noise and she is digging around in my arm with a needle... at least that's what it feels like! She gives me the option of trying the other arm which I take because, heck, I'm already there, why not? 
She finds the vein after putting an inflated cuff on me and having me pump. I tell her I will not move one centimeter and I don't during the whole sterilization process. Turns out that it was all in vain ... haha, that's a pun... because the stupid thing rolls and she can't find it. Of course, she only realizes this after the needle is in me. Eventually, she strikes gold and I begin pumping. It's going soooooo slow that the scale is beeping pretty much non-stop to let her know that it is going at a snail's pace. After I hit my 10 min mark, and had pumped only half a bag, she comes over to look at the needle and lifts it ever so slightly... this really does the trick because I start gushing. 
We both think that I am gonna make the 20 min deadline. Suddenly, it slows down when I have 10-20 grams to go and the nurses start talking about what to do.... "Well, the rules say approximately 20 minutes...." So they start moving the needle around again to try to get those last couple of grams so I, we all, can be finished with this process. It doesn't hurt... I just sit there with my head turned to the side so I don't have to see the needle in my arm. Then it's over. They don't really tell me what has happened, just that I'm done. Turns out, while moving that needle about, it caught some air which contaminated the line that led to my bag of blood. Contaminated. 
The nurse says to me, in jest, "You and your hubby are a bunch of troublemakers!"


We each spent an hour (prep, donating, recovering) of our time trying to give blood to a good cause and all we gave was a hard time to the nurses and one and a half pints of contaminated blood. Happy Anniversary baby.