I just gave blood again, for the second time in my life. I don’t know why I didn’t start this a way way long time ago, but I didn’t, so now I must make up for it. If I could give blood every day, I’d do it. But nope, every 56 days, that’s the rule.
My blood pressure was a little lower this time (104/54), but it was perfectly low last time (100/72), so I guess all is good. Last time they grilled me with an endless list of questions, and I didn’t realize they’d do the same thing again. Have you ever taken X drug, have you ever taken Y drug? All the drugs with really really long names, they seemed to be interested in. I told the nurse that I didn’t realize there were that many drugs. Have I ever taken a drug using a needle that wasn’t legal? I don’t think she put it quite like that, but I assume she meant heroin, which I’ve never tried.
I did see “Ray” last night, and he did quite a bit of heroin, and I wanted to talk to the nurse about what a good movie it was, but she was just all about getting through the questions, which of course was understandable. Do you have AIDS? Have you had sex with somebody who has AIDS? Have you ever had sex with a man who had sex with a man with AIDS? Did you ever share a needle? Have you been in the U.K. anytime since 1980? Did you ever pay for sex? Did you ever receive money for sex?
With each question, I was dying to tell her the things that popped into my head as she asked them – nope, I’ve never paid for sex, unless you mean the emotional payment. Nope, nobody’s ever given me money for sex, but I have had some boyfriends who gave me very lovely gifts, does that count? One of them gave me a really dazzling pearl necklace that I always forget to wear. I hope I’ve never had sex with a man who’s had sex with a man PERIOD, with or without AIDS, but you certainly never know, do you?
On and on the questions went, and then it was the needle in the arm time. She poked it into my right arm, and it hurt more than I remembered it hurting last time. Damn, this is going to be uncomfortable. But then she took it out. Uh oh. It went in sideways, hence the pain. So she had to put it in the left arm, instead.
She said my right arm would be bruised a LOT, and I should put a cold compress on it when I get home, and then heat tomorrow. I just took the dramatic bandage off, and it doesn’t hurt at the moment. Not as much as my arms hurt after doing too much weight-lifting, for example. And not as much as the big bruise I have on one hip, that I can’t recall how I got. Crashing into something, no doubt.
So then the blood started flowing out of my left arm, and it wasn’t bad, and it didn’t take very long. If you haven’t given blood (and I don’t think nearly enough people do), you should definitely do it. I mean, don’t worry about getting the needle in wrong, because that wasn’t happening to any of the other people there, and I’m sure it won’t happen again.
And, here’s the best part, I mean besides doing something good and unselfish for humanity and your fellow human beings and all of that – they give you juice and treats afterwards. You HAVE to have juice, they insist on it. Last time there were giant Grandma’s cookies, and today they had cheddar crackers with peanut butter. I mean, high quality snacks that I normally never, ever get. They were those bright orange cheddar crackers, delicious.
So, go give some blood, do something good.
And, as an added bonus, I must say that I feel really good. My mood has been slightly horribly awful all day, and for some reason, I’m feeling pretty elated. Maybe it’s because the nurse said that my blood pressure was perfectly good since “you’re so tiny.” I don’t believe anybody has described me as “so tiny,” and I’m not, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was nice that she thought I was.
I don’t really think that’s the reason for the elation, however – I think it’s because I’m unburdened of all that weighty blood. I feel lighter (not tiny, just lighter), freer, less encumbered.
By the way, I’ve decided that the Fit Club is an excellent place to learn all kinds of valuable things about life. I think I already wrote about the women I heard talking about the fact that they wake up in the middle of the night, like I do. And then, yesterday, a woman told me she’d been in Maine, and how it was so snowy there but they did a good job of clearing the roads. She talked about how beautiful it is up there, the abundance of nature, how it’s humbling and powerful to be in all that beauty. That gave me pause. I need to be in nature really soon, except it needs to be warm nature.
And today, I went to Fit Club West for a change, and they have individual TV screens on the treadmills, so you can watch absolutely anything you want to. I switched between an Elvis Presley movie, a Cheech and Chong movie, and “Judging Amy.” And the weather channel, of course.
I’d only seen Judging A once before, and liked it. This time, Amy’s brother was having problems because he’s a writer and he doesn’t have enough time to write, and his mother doesn’t take it seriously. And he was talking about the craft, and how it can take years and years to finish a novel, and how sometimes the words don’t come, and he said a bunch of other kind of interesting things about writing, I can’t remember them exactly. But anyway, even though at the moment my writing only consists mostly of writing here on this website, it made me think that the writing has some validity, there’s some meaning and purpose here. Besides that it’s totally enjoyable and fairly effortless.
Whew. Quite a day, today, Wednesday.
I rented “kill bill volume 2” and was going to watch it tonight, but ran out of time. But now I have that to look forward to tomorrow night, seeing uma Thurman KICK SOME MORE ASS.
Good night.
Grace still bleeding