Is nothing like donating blood.
You come into the waiting area, sign yourself in at the counter, and sit down to wait. You’re SURROUNDED by poor people. People with ugly clothes and ugly haircuts and ugly children and sunburnt, expressionless faces entirely devoid of hope. The desperation in the room is palpable. Eventually one of the many uniformly unfriendly technicians calls you to check your documents. You need an ID, a SS card, and a proof of residency. You show them everything, sit back down.
Someone else -another technician – calls you to take your blood pressure and temperature.
You go back to wait.
Then someone calls you for a physical. You go into a room, lie on a table and they feel up your lymph nodes and stomach. Then there’s a long questionnaire about sexual practices, drug use, and tattoos and piercings. You go back to wait.
Someone else calls you up to the counter again. They prick your finger to draw blood. They collect the blood between two small sheets of glass.
You go back to wait.
Finally, someone calls you to the donation room. It’s huge- dozens of beds lined up side to side with pumping machines attached to each.
On the left side of the room, in the back, there’s a group of children watching a movie. The first time I saw them, my heart broke. To know there were babysitting services. So moms would bring their kids to do this. To sell blood.
The technician leads you to an empty bed, motioning for you to climb in. Silently, he fiddles with the machine. When it is ready, “Extend your arm,” he says.
He rubs iodine over the vein area for about a minute. Then, he sticks in the needle.
One time, he stuck it all the way through my vein. I knew immediately that something was wrong, because it HURT! But, when I asked if everything was ok, he mumbled yes, and walked away without so much as a glance.
I tried to pump, as he’d instructed. Squishing the plastic star I was given in my hand. But nothing was happening to the machine. My arm was turning blue, and it still hurt.
Feeling helpless, I glared down another technician and begged him to tell me what was going on. He gave my machine a perfunctory glance and nodded that everything was fine.
Ten minutes later, my arm was purple, there was blood collecting where the needle entered the skin, and I felt like I was about to pass out. Thankfully, the lady in the bed across from mine noticed that something was wrong, and she was not timid. She called yet another technician, who finally adjusted the needle so that I could pump.
It takes about an hour to get 900 mL of plasma. An hour of alternating between “pumping” and resting while the blood is released back in. The pumping isn’t so bad, but feeling the blood flow back into your arm is absolutely disgusting.
Then the machine switches off, and a couple of minutes later, another technician comes by to hook you up to a saline solution (which will chill you to your bones). After all of it’s injected, he comes back, removes the needled, bandages you up, and you’re free to go.
You stop by the cashier’s on your way out. She hands you two ten-dollar bills.
It’s never worth it.
