So at age 14 I just accepted it. Blood and I don’t get along. I would prefer it stay inside people and not come out. It was 9th grade and I was sick, very sick, but was so worried about missing something important in class that I went to school anyway, even though I was feeling terribly weak. In English we read aloud a short story about a boy who lived near the ocean and wanted to swim deep down through a hole in a reef to come out the other side. As the story progressed, this boy swam down so deep and the pressure was so great that blood came out of his eyes and filled his mask… I ended up passing out right then and there. This was not my first blood-related pass out experience. Apparently this time I had tipped to the side and fell out of my chair, of course smacking my head on Steven Finnegan’s desk next to me as I went. Let me tell you how cool it feels to wake up to 6 of your classmates in a circle looking down on you after you’ve just fainted… super cool.
Jr. high ended, I went to high school and college, and didn’t have any more fainting incidences. After college, still no troubles with lightheadedness or the like. Even when I was pregnant and was forced to give out vials and vials of the stuff as if it were a party favor, I actually kept it together. So I’m thinkin’- Look at me, I’m a big girl now. I can handle whatever I need to. Of course I wasn’t going to voluntarily go donate blood or something crazy like that, but I was confident I wouldn’t have to deal with the whole issue any longer. That is, until after I had my first little baby boy.
When my sweetheart and I showed up to the hospital to have our 1st precious baby, we weren’t prepared for all the fun shenanigans that sometimes crop up in the delivery room- and by “fun” I mean “totally horrifying.” Long birth story short, I lost a swimming pool’s worth of blood or something, and needed an immediate transfusion. (Good thing I wasn’t delivering underneath some wagon out on the plains while biting on my bonnet.) They rushed in 2 or 3 bags of blood and everything was eventually going to be fine, but after that pretty decent scare, I figured I had better be more willing to give blood the next time I had the opportunity, and I silently thanked my Heavenly Father and those who had selflessly donated blood so that I could live to raise the beautiful child I’d just been given.
Fast-forward to earlier this month. I was sitting in a combined Relief Society/Priesthood meeting when it happened- the sign up sheet. It was for our stake blood drive and almost every line had been left blank. It was as if each unfilled space was daring me to pass it along without choosing to serve my fellow man. I hesitated for just a moment and then wrote my name on the 6:00 slot. My husband noticed and had me write his name down too. We were committed.
The evening of the blood drive came. Keep in mind I have never participated in this sort of activity before, so the following experiences are all new to me; We walked in and it was like a party was taking place. I could hear Sublime and Selena Gomez being played in the cultural hall. (Can you play Sublime on church property?) We checked in and were each given a sticker with our name on it, along with our appointment time. My husband picked up the car seat with our baby inside, I took our 3 yr. old by the hand, and we walked into the cultural hall.
Oh my goodness! I was not at all prepared for what I found. 4 or 5 rows of chairs set up in a corner constituted our “line” to wait in. Another corner and along the back wall occupied 6 or so make-shift cubicles that people were entering and exiting accompanied by someone in navy blue scrubs. But what made my eyes go wide were the 12 donation chairs set up in the center of the room no less than 10 feet from where we sat. Each one contained some nursery worker, or ward clerk, or Deacon’s quorum advisor sitting there looking terribly bored while their arm was hooked up to a large tube that snaked down to- get ready for this- full on, out in the open, no concealment here, “yes nurse I need a scalpel,” bags of blood. I didn’t know each bag (massive bag, might I add) just hung off the side of each chair for all to see like some disgusting stocking off your mantel at Christmas time. Gross! Someone cover these things up! I could literally watch as drop by drop the bags filled with blood that looked almost black. It was like a break-the-fast activity for a ward of vampires.
The next thought I had was that this was no place to have brought our children. My energetic 3 year old is going to run through this maze of chairs and knock over bags of blood left and right. It’ll be like the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas, only with screams of horror accompanying the show rather than Pavarotti.
The 4 of us, including the car seat, all shuffled into a row of chairs to wait in line. We strategically placed the kids next to the wall in hopes of avoiding the bloody fountain show. A Red Cross worker walked up and asked, “who’s next,” and I noticed that the person who stood up had a time on their sticker of almost an hour before us. This was going to be a long night. How are we going to keep our boys contained for so long? Good thing I’d packed their dinners. I then realized that my husband and I weren’t going to be able to give blood at the same time. Someone would need to wait with the kids until the other was completely finished, in effect making this night last even longer. I swear, sometimes I’m an idiot. What did I think I was going to do- have my 3 yr. old sit quietly and still and perfectly content on my lap while I squeezed the little stress ball in one hand and held lovingly onto my husband in the next chair with the other? And he of course would rock the car seat on the floor with his foot while “We Are a Happy Family” played softly in the background. Duh.
We decided my husband would go first, so while waiting for his turn, he took my oldest outside, and I hung out with the baby in “line.” I now had lots of time to sit and think. Even though this is slightly uncomfortable, I thought, we are here to serve. And even though this is going to take the entire evening rather than the 30 minutes I’d previously assumed it’d take, we are here to serve. We have opportunities to serve quite often in the LDS church, but if I’m being honest about most of what I’ve done as service, it’s all been stuff that’s actually pretty enjoyable. As the RS Activities Chair, I basically just put on parties for all my friends and I. As the Achievement Days leader, I basically put on parties for adorable little 8-11 yr. olds who would then hug me and tell me how wonderful I was and how much they loved me. Sweetest gig ever, right??? Even making dinner for a new mom or helping out in the nursery spawns a happy interaction. So being here, about to give away all the blood in my arm, is probably good for me. I’m going to truly give of myself in a way that’s of no benefit to me and is actually somewhat difficult and uncomfortable. All right, cool. Selfless service. Let’s do this.
My husband’s turn came, so I then had both my precious boys to entertain in this very small space for the next 45 min. We sang Wheels on the Bus, the ABC’s, and dangled toys in front of the baby, but after a couple escapes were attempted, I brought out the big guns- Daddy’s iphone.
My husband returned, and as we traded places and I headed for one of the mysterious cubicles, he told me “have fun.” Once in our own little cubby, I sat down with my scrub clad phlebotomist and had the weirdest interview of my life. “Are you a prostitute?” “Were you ever a prostitute?” “Have you ever had sex with a prostitute?” “Do you have Chlamydia, crabs, herpes, HIV, 6 toes on your left foot, a letter from Hogwarts, or a unicorn tail?”………ya, no, I think we’re good on all that.
Once we determined my blood was indeed Chlamydia free, I was taken to my own nifty blue donation chair and the rest really was simple; I was complimented on my nice veins, painted with some sort of sterilizing solution, poked, and left alone to squeeze the stress ball. Pretty soon they told me I was done, and I waited as they unhooked everything, wrapped stretchy red tape around my arm, and asked my first and last name multiple times while checking that against what was printed on the blood bag. Since I hadn’t eaten dinner and it was now a little after 8pm, they asked that I drink a small can of juice and wait a few minutes before standing up to go home. I laid back again, noted how yummy the juice was, glanced at the 3 handsome men who were waiting for me on the other side of the gym, and began scrolling through pictures on my phone.
The next thing I remember is my chin on my chest, my eyes shut, and hearing people around me saying, “She’s out. She’s out.” Oh great. I passed out? Seriously? I was completely done with the whole dang process! I felt someone holding my hands and asking, “Jane, can you squeeze my fingers? Squeeze my fingers, Jane.” My name is not Jane. Apparently the nice older woman who’d given me my name sticker forgot the other A in my name, so I got to be Jane rather than Janae for the rest of this lovely experience.
“Jane? Open your eyes, Jane. Squeeze my fingers and open your eyes Jane.” I did NOT want to open my eyes. And I couldn’t squeeze their fingers if my life depended on it. I felt horrible, easily worse than waking up from any other fainting spell in the past. Thinking back on it now, I still can’t completely describe how I felt- I wasn’t nauseous, I wasn’t exactly in pain, I just felt really and truly terrible- just BAD. And the Red Cross workers buzzing around me, calling me the wrong name and demanding I do things I wasn’t able to really didn’t help matters. After I decided opening my eyes was possible, I saw my husband walking over. (Side note- it’s really nice to see an attractive man staring down at you after you’ve passed out, especially when you’re feeling poorly.) I looked around and realized they had tipped my chair completely back so that I was now staring at the basketball standard above me. After that, I realized I was now going to throw up, and boy, did I throw up. (Side note- it’s really embarrassing to have an attractive man stare down at you while you vomit into a red plastic bag. I’m sure the super sexy noises of heaving and retching make attractive men everywhere say, “Nice. I get to take this hot little number home with me.” It doesn’t matter how many pregnancies we’ve endured together, I still never want to puke in front of my husband.)
I threw up twice and then decided that all the juice I’d been given had finished it’s encore performance, so I gave the plastic bag back to…actually, I don’t know who I gave my gross bag to. Sorry Person with my vomit bag. Just then my sweetheart was summoned back over to our kids and I saw that one of our friends was also there giving blood and getting to take part in the dramatic episode of my attempting to serve by sitting with our kids while my husband watched me puke. Just what I needed, someone from the ward to witness me in all my vomitous glory. Embarrassing. Thanks again for sitting with our kids, Mark.
“She’s hyperventilating!” I am? I didn’t think I was breathing abnormally, but apparently I was because they brought me a paper bag and stood there while I breathed in and out for a while. How completely disconcerting, I thought. Why in the world can’t my body handle giving up a little blood? This really is so dumb and I’m making a total spectacle of myself. But I guess it wasn’t enough of a spectacle up to that point, because right about then I decided to start shaking and shivering and they had to bring me one of those huge fleece blankets with “RED CROSS” written across the top. Keep in mind this place is still crawling with people. I don’t even want to know what kind of dramatic show the donors sitting in front of me were getting. I’m sure they were rolling their eyes at the light-weight in chair 6 who couldn’t hack it.
I laid there under my bright red blanket, shaking and breathing into my state-of-the-art paper sack, trying to pull it together. I still felt woozy, disgusting, and nauseous, and all I wanted to do was go home, but at this point I was also ready to laugh at how ridiculous this evening had turned out. Can I get out of here now? I started getting impatient with my body and was inwardly telling myself to quit freaking out and level off already so that I could stand up and go, but it turns out the fun wasn’t over yet.
What do you do when you haven’t been enough of a dork in front of 50 strangers, a ward friend, and your eternal companion, and you need to humiliate yourself just a little bit more? Why, just go ahead and cry! What a great idea. I put the paper sack down and inexplicably burst into tears, just as my husband came back to check on me. I tried to hide my face and wipe away the tears rolling down my cheeks, all the while thinking, why the heck am I crying? No, seriously. Why am I crying? I’m not sad. I’m not mad. I’m embarrassed for sure, but it would take something on the level of mortification to make me actually cry. And then again with the phlebotomists, “Jane? Jane, how many children do you have? Tell me about your kids, Jane.”
Oh my gosh. That does it. I gotta get out of here. I asked my husband to load the kids in the car and then come back to help me up and out. I gave the blanket back, dropped the paper sack on the floor, made sure I had my phone, and held my husband’s arm as I slowly walked out of the building. Our friend Mark was standing next to the open door of our car with the kids and I gave him a humiliated smile and told him thank you. So embarrassing. As we drove away, our oldest son kept asking if I was ok and what was wrong and why was Mommy crying. I felt terrible for upsetting him and tried to reassure him I was going to be just fine. What a sweetheart.
Once home, I again had to be helped into the house and onto the couch. I saw that it was almost 9 pm. This blood donation adventure had lasted more than 3 hours! Holy cow. My knight in shining polo shirt brought me something to eat and then went to put our boys to bed. I was still cold so I grabbed the closest blanket, which happened to be my son’s green blanket for his bed. After returning from dressing in his pajamas, my sweet 3 year old came over to me on the couch and told me, “is ok Mommy, is go-be alright,” and then patted my head. Precious boy. My husband finished brushing teeth and changing diapers, and laid our very tired baby in his crib. When it came time to put our oldest down, I rolled myself off the couch and walked in to kneel by his bedside for our ritual of prayers and a lullaby. He said his cute little prayer, gave us each hugs, and then got up on his bed. We covered him in his green blanket which he’s had since he was born, and were surprised when he got upset and told us, “no!” He pulled the blanket off his shoulders and said, “…my blanket for Mommy,” and then tried to give it back to me. The entire evening of insanity and discomfort was instantly worth it to have seen and felt such compassion and concern from my darling boy. I will always keep this memory close to my heart. And even though I spent the rest of the night and then some recovering from giving up that amount of blood, I recognized that truly selfless service is sometimes a very good thing for us to perform. It keeps in perspective all those other ways in which we’re asked to give of ourselves, and hopefully reminds us that others give selflessly to us all the time.
‘Guess it was just another day in the life of a Mormon Housewife.