So, I realize that when I had that terrible experience at the Bonfils at St. Joseph's several months back, I swore off attempting to donating blood. Seriously, those people were just beyond rude. They made me feel like they were doing me a favor by even being there-- you know, instead of me attempting to give over body parts to people who need them. Anywho...
I'm still sworn off going back to that center-- or maybe any Bonfils blood donation center. They're on my bad list, for sures. But when Googling blood donating in Colorado, the second link to come up was the blood donation center at Children's. Now, that I can get behind.
So I scheduled my appointment via their website and e-mail, made sure to eat breakfast this morning, and drank plenty of fluids beforehand, as prescribed (ok, this is sort of a lie. I drank two glasses of water right before I left, as I'd forgotten to get around to it earlier). And then headed out to Aurora. Finally after navigating both the parking structure and the inner corridors of the hospital, I arrived at the blood donor center, where I was shown into a cute little cubicle with sliding glass doors on either side, where I filled out my form and then opened the door on the far side to indicate I was finished.
A phlebotomist in maybe her 40s or 50s, wearing a fuzzy headband with two sparkly bats on springs sticking out from the top, introduced herself as Maddy (I have no idea if that's how you spell her name. But whatever, people never get mine right either). At first I thought she seemed sort of non-talkative, very straightforward, but I was glad she was older and maybe thus more experienced at-- seriously? you know what I'm going to say here-- the finger prick. But while she was inputting my information and clarifying answers, she asked if I'd donated at Children's before, and I told her I'd actually not donating before, anywhere. "Well, we'll make sure this is a good experience for you today," she assured me. (Contrast to the Bonfils people who seemed to wish to ensure the opposite.)
Anyway, about that finger prick... the part that makes oh-such-a-difference. People who are bad at these make you think you are going to die. People who are good at them, you hardly notice (ok, that's a lie too, I mean it still hurts, but nothing like the other end of the spectrum). Maddy? Maddy was a pro. I told her that she was much better at it than a lot of people. She told me the trick, which is that they need to stay away from right in the middle of your finger, which is where most of the nerve endings are. My confidence in this woman who I was hoping to let suck my blood out on this Halloween was growing by the minute.
Of course, there was already one potential hitch. On the first temperature read she'd taken in my ear, before doing the finger prick, it'd read at 38 degrees C. She'd seemed surprised, and so had I, as I almost never get a fever (or so I'd thought... more on that later). And of course, because I was feeling just fine. She'd said the highest they could take was 37.5 C, and so she re-took it after taking my blood pressure (excellent as always) and doing the finger prick... and it was now 38.1 C. I couldn't do the math on this in my head, but I know that 37 is normal body temp (come on, I am a microbiology student, after all), and 40 is hot (which I first discovered while standing in a farmer's field in rural South Africa, on a 40 degree C day, long ago).
Alas, Maddy told me they're only allowed to take the temperature twice. She checked how long a high temperature defers a person for, and informed me that it'll be in the computer as deferred for 2 weeks, but if I don't come down with something by Monday or Tuesday, I can return sooner than that. I thanked her, genuinely-- even if I didn't get to donate blood today, I will mostly definitely be back (I wonder if I can request a phlebotomist...?)
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| At least I got a Sesame Street band-aid out of it. :) |
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Two side notes to this story: First, while doing a workshop with eight-graders at work yesterday, and trying to give them a feel for the temperatures they were measuring in celsius, I asked if they knew how to convert from C to F. Their teacher injected the formula of "double it... and then add 32." My co-worker apparently also believed this was the correct way to make that conversion. Let us review: my actual temperature today, as recorded by Maddy, was 38.1 C. Which is you do the correct conversion, is 100.6 F. If you do the conversion the silly way, it comes to 108.2 F.
In other words, doing the correct conversion is the difference between discovering my body fighting off some low-level infection that I wasn't aware of, and fearing that my brain is cooking in my head. Who said accuracy doesn't matter? :)
Second side note: when I got home, I took my temperature on my digital oral thermometer (I had a different one I liked better-- well, I think I still do somewhere)-- but it died. The reading? 97.2. So maybe all those times I felt sick but "didn't have a temperature," I was really cooking. I think this thermometer is about finished with its usefulness in this household!
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