I'm SO positive!

Get it? It rhymes with O-positive, which is my blood type. Funny, huh?

The point is, I gave blood last week. I am such a hero. Blood donation and I have a hilarious history, which I thought I should share, because it is awesome.

The first time I ever gave blood I was 17. The youngest you can be. All through high school I had seen the blood drive people come and set up in the Commons, and watched the old enough Juniors and the Seniors line up to give blood. I thought it was great, but a little scary, but I figured when I was old enough, I would definitely do it.

Well, the time came. I was 17, and they had a blood drive at the school. I went with Katie, during lunch. We signed up, got our fingers pricked, then they put us on those little reclining chairs next to each other. We looked away and talked to each other when they put the needle in, and I was feeling okay. It kind of stung when they put it in, but I was fine. As you probably know, you have to squeeze a little ball every 3-5 seconds to get that blood draining. I was still feeling fine . . . ish. I felt a little weak.

My nurse came by and said nicely, "Could you try and squueze the ball a little bit harder?" Katie's nurse came by and said, "Wow, you are fast! This might be a record." Katie was watching the clock, and pumping hard, because she had a meeting to get to. I was trying my best to keep squeezing the ball, and a tiny bit aware that I might have been sweating. Kate finished up, told me good luck, and took off to her NHS meeting, robust and healthy as a horse. Later that day she played in a softball game and did just fine.

I kept feebly squeezing the stress ball, waiting and waiting for that bag to fill up completely. I was glad it was almost over. I kept telling myself it was mind over matter, and that if I just THOUGHT that I wasn't freaked out, then I would be fine. Finally the bag was completely filled, and they came to get me bandaged up. As the nurse took the needle out, I saw a tiny bit of alarm flash across her face, and she started saying, "So how old are you? What year in school? What's your favorite class?" I remember thinking, "She is only talking to me so I won't faint." Another nurse came over and put a pack of ice on my chest. Everything was swirly and flashy. They both kept talking to me, and bandaged me up with some pink gauze. I didn't pass out, but it was definitely close. They had me lay there on the chair for like 5 more minutes. I think they brought me some juice. They talked to me, and I remember they told me I looked really pale. Which was hilarious to me because I ALWAYS look pale, you  know?

They finally let me get up from the chair, but told me to go sit in the snack area for like 10 minutes before going to class, which at this point I was late for. Yeah, it took me all of lunch to do this. Katie had been gone for like 20 minutes. So I sat and weakly stuffed Oreos in my mouth with Traci Honomichl, a girl a year older than me who apparently was in the same dizzy boat. And not to be rude, but it didn't exactly make me feel very awesome that she and I were in the same situation. She wasn't one of those girls I aspired to be. Ever since she had passive aggressively made fun of my piano playing in Seminary the previous year, I wasn't super fond of her. Anyway, the requisite recovery time had passed, and I felt really great compared to when I had been laying in the chair. I was convinced there were no more lingering effects of my blood loss. So I made my way to Ms. Zachreson's Algebra 2 class in A Wing. I walked in late, of course, and my friends Ben and Isaac looked at me and said, "oh my gosh, are you ok? You look REALLY pale!" Awesome.

The next eventful time I gave blood was at BYU. I waited and waited, because everyone at BYU loves giving blood. I filled out the paperwork, they pricked my finger, I had the little interview. I had marked on my sheet that I had been out of the country, because the Christmas before was when my family went to Ecuador and Peru with a humanitarian group. The lady doing the interview said, "So, you marked that you traveled out of the country. Where did you go?"
"Ecuador and Peru."
"Where in those countries did you go?"
"Cuenca and Machu Picchu."
"Did you travel to the mountains in Ecuador?"
"Yes."
"Did you drive or fly across the border of Ecuador and Peru?"
"We drove."
"Ok, because you went to the mountains, and because you drove across the border, you can't give blood. Cuenca is fine, and Cusco and Machu Picchu are fine, but the border is not, and the mountains are not."
"Awesome. How long do I have to wait before I can do it again?"
"One year."
Great. So I had sat and waited for SO long, and then I couldn't even do it. Annoying. Not anyone's fault, it was just annoying.

I must say, though, good work on declaring the frontiera of Ecuador and Peru unsafe. Because DAYUM. That was about the scariest place I've ever been in my life. Not to mention the crazy guy that was hitching a ride on our bus, who told my brother Jordan to "make his own life," and said to my dad, "All they understand down here is money, amigo, and I've got plenty of it!" I haven't thought about him in a while. That is a longer story, though, and has nothing to do with my heroic type O blood.

The final interesting blood giving story also happened at BYU. The requisite year had passed since Ecuador, and I wanted to give blood again. So, I waited, I signed up, they pricked my finger, I hadn't traveled anywhere unsafe, good to go. So, they got me going, I was pumping the ball, feeling good, and thinking, I'm totally fine. Just as a precaution, though, I told the nurse, "I've only done this a couple of times, and I usually get really woozy and pale and nearly pass out when they take out the needle. So please just talk to me and maybe have an ice pack ready near the end." She was like, great, thanks for telling me.

Then, as I was expecting, when they took out the needle, everything got all blurry and it seemed like there were paparazzi in my face from all the flashing lights. She talked to me, asked what my major was, gave me an ice pack, and I took deep breaths. I think I told her about study abroad, which I was leaving for just a couple months after this. The ice pack felt good, and I was convinced I was fine. But the nurse had other plans for me. She had me lay down on the floor and elevate my feet. Which is great, except that I was WEARING A SKIRT. I was lucid enough to protest throwing my legs in the air like I just didn't care while people I knew walked by and peeked at my drawers, luckily. So she produced a blanket. I laid on the floor, put my legs up on a chair, covered up by one of those blankets the Red Cross hands out to accident victims. I felt like a natural disaster poser or something.

Let me take this moment to remind you that this was not happening in like some secret room. It was in the Wilk, which if you don't know BYU, is the building with the food court, which means there are TONS of people there all the time, and the likelihood of seeing someone you know is very high. So there I am, laying there with a blanket thrown over me, just chilling and waiting for them to tell me there was enough pink in my cheeks to go to Italian. If that doesn't make you feel like a big woman on campus, I don't know what will.

And then, of course, once I was proclaimed hearty enough to go to class, as soon as I got there, the girls in my class took one look at me and said, "Oh my gosh, are you ok?" Perfect.

And THEN, a few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail from the blood peeps. It said they couldn't use my blood because there was something wrong with it. If I had any questions I could call some 800 number. Um . . . WHAT? I think most of you know I'm not super calm, and I'm a little hypochondriacal. So a letter in the mail casually telling me there's something wrong with my blood was NOT something I wanted to hear. I kept telling people about it and saying, "It's not like it's my finger! It's my BLOOD! It's EVERYWHERE IN MY BODY!" while gesturing wildly throughout my body. I called the place and they calmly told me something was coating my white blood cells that amde it impossible to use my blood. Cool.

So I made a doctor's appointment, to make sure I wasn't DYING. I went, they did a blood test, and turns out--mononucleosis. For reals. I had mono and didn't even know it. And somehow that coated my white blood cells and rendered my blood un-usable. It makes sense that I had it, the Whiz had it the previous semester. And when you push your beds together with your roommate to make a super bed, the chances that you're going to catch her mono are pretty high. But still, it was nuts. I actually felt bad, because TW had the classic mono experience, sleeping even more than she already did, she practically had to drop out of school and quit her job, all while being engaged--it was rough stuff, and I felt really bad for her. And then I somehow had it, and the only ill effects I could see were that I had like 4 colds that winter, when I usually only have 1.

And that, friends, was the last time I gave blood until last week. I know, I shouldn't have waited that long. I went to Ecuador again in 2007, so I knew I had to wait at least a year, but I just never did it. But finally I manned up, gave myself a pep talk about how so many people can benefit from my blood, and I did it. And guess what? Totally didn't pass out. Not even close.