Trueblood

So I come from a family where you donate blood. Not in a cool vampire kind of a way, but you actually go to your local donation place and you ask if they would be so kind to stick a huge needle into your arm and suck your veins dry. Afterwards they give you a cracker and send you on your way. Jolly good time.

Still, it's the thing to do. If you can, you donate blood, and that's that.

My dad has donated so much blood that it's a miracle he's got any left. For this he was rewarded a dozen red roses and a medal, and they asked him to never return again ( a.k.a. he got too old to donate). Way to go daddy-P.

The thing is that it's gotten damn hard to donate blood these days. And here's why.

You're constantly banned from donating. While living in Finland I was mostly banned for having had tattoos or piercings done. At one point you were banned for 6 months after such a terrible massacre executed on your body (that after all is a temple, right? Wrong. It's just a body).

A couple of times I was banned because I had been to Africa for a vacation. Me and a friend of mine (= two young women, one blond ) went to Gambia for a week because we wanted to get away from the cold in the motherland, and we happened to find this offer. Now usually Gambia is not the place to go if you want some peace and quiet and good food, but since it cost little, off we went. I don't see how it's possible to catch any kind of a disease if you're locked inside the hotel for 7 days since you're too freaked out to go anywhere because of the scary locals, but better safe than sorry. So again, banned for at least 4 months.

A couple of times I was banned because of low hemoglobin. OK, that's just boring, but still banned until further notice.

Then of course once in every blue moon I had managed to lure some poor guy into having a relationship with me, and as we all know you're banned for 3 months after a "new sexual encounter". Was I banned for this reason very often? No. Did it happen every time I was otherwise good to go? Yes.

Last summer I tried to go and donate blood while I was on a vacation in Finland. I was all ready to go, nothing could stop me now!! Except the fact that once you've lived more than 6 months in a country that is NOT one of the Nordic countries, you're banned until such time that you're living in Scandinavia again.

Pissed off as I was about that, I decided that well if my blood isn't good enough for the Finns, then let's see if the Italians would take it. So this morning I went to do the check-up at the hospital.

First I filled out the paperwork, name, date of birth, yes yes I'm from Finland isn't it lovely not it's not snowing there yet. After that they take about 10 liters of blood from me in order to analyze it to a tee. As I was sitting down to have the blood sucked out of me, the nurse yells to everybody in the room (a dozen people or so) "Look, we have a FINN today. Woo-hoo". In fact I've always enjoyed giving blood while having 12 Italians staring at me like the nurse had just said that I have a third nipple or something.

After the bloody part they give you stuff to eat. Now that's kinda nice. I never know how much you should eat. It's free food so you shouldn't eat like you've never seen a sandwich before, but then again you shouldn't eat too little or you'll faint. So I ate a yogurt and a chocolate cracker. After all, I wasn't officially a blood donor yet.

Then they asked me the silliest question that you can ask a 33 year old. "When was the last time you had an echocardiacdiagram-something done?". "Eeeeeee....... try never?". So off I go to do the heart-thing. I guess it's good to make sure that your blood donor doesn't have a heart attack while you're sticking them with something that looks like the Seattle Space Needle.

Now all that's left is the interview with the doctor. A very nice lady, smiles at me like I was Santa Claus. Now her job would be to determine if I'm good enough of a person to donate blood. If I drink or smoke or do sex/drugs/rockenroll and so on. She asks me if I'm married. I say "no, unfortunately not". "Well don't you worry, a pretty girl like yourself will soon find someone" "Well, these days it seems hard to find the right person who'll treat you right". She gives me an understanding look, sighs, repeats quietly "that'll treat you right", and immediately skips over all the questions about sexually transmitted diseases etc. Now excuse me lady, even though I'm not an asshole and don't mind looking for the right person instead of hooking up with John Doe with a cute smile over there, doesn't mean that you can just skip those questions. For all you know I'm infested with god knows what. Anyways, I let it go, didn't want to cause trouble and maybe be banned for bad behavior.

And that was it. Off to work I go.

Donating blood is bloody hard work. It's almost like they're doing the best they can NOT to have people donate. Of course it's good that they're precise, after all, we all want to be given nice clean healthy blood when we go to the hospital with our guts hanging out.

So go. Donate blood if you can. Not because it's the "Blood Donor Day" or because mom said you have to. Do it because in the end, after all the questions and extremely relevant tests to determine if you're likely to suffer a heart attack any time soon, it makes you feel like you've done something worth while even if otherwise the whole day was a total waste. You're helping save someone's life. Maybe mine. Maybe Robert Pattison's. You never know.