And two mango juice boxes. UPDATED!

I donated blood today and as soon as my iron level was approved, I immediately sent a text saying "Iron score!!" to which one person responded and the rest just deleted me from their contacts list.

I was super pumped (ha!) until they stuck the needle in a bad vein and no blood came out. A second nurse was called over. They wiggled the needle a bit and blood sluggishly pushed through the clear tube.

"Are you feeling alright?" the nurse asked, untaping and retaping the tube to my foreman for the third time.

I mumbled something positive. I was watching Ellen. It was the episode with Audrina Patridge and Tony from when they were on Dancing With the Stars and I had to squint to read the captions.

The nurse gave up on the tape and held the needle in place the entire time, while the first nurse peered over her shoulder and tried to look reassuring. I watched Tony get in a dunk tank.

When I was done--and Tony was soaking--they wrapped a blue gauze/bandage/thing around my elbow which annoyed me because I totally wanted the pink one. Pfft. At the snacks table, one of the volunteers was a high school student who turned pale the moment he saw my bandaged arm, which is a neat trick considering he's brown. "What did it feel like?"

"Huh?"

"Did it hurt?"

I frowned. The other--more experienced--volunteer jumped in. Apparently do needles make you squeamish? is not a question on their application form. We tried assuring him that it hardly hurts and isn't that big of a deal, but he remained unconvinced and kept glancing uncertainly towards the nurses area.

"The worst case scenario is that you pass out, and that when you wake up, they give you cookies." I waved a crinkling packet of Oreos around. "Worst case scenario is cookies."

UPDATE: Big ass bruise. I look like I got punched in the elbow.

Tonight, Tonight

I figured I'd write a (fourth!!) blog entry before all energy has left me completely.

Today I had one cup of Earl Grey tea and two grande Starbucks coffees. Therefore, I came home and cleaned up my entire closet, threw out half my wardrobe of old should-have-gotten-rid-of-it-last-year-but-its-still-kinda-pretty blouses and pants with holes the size of netbooks in the crotchs, then sorted all of my dirty laundry and folded all my clean laundry into cute little piles that make my closet shelves look very avant-garde (every other square shelf has a purse or a pair of shoes in it. It's my dream closet).

For some reason, every time I clean my closet, my room gets a lot messier.

I'm currently listening to what's supposed to be West Side Story's Somewhere, but instead what sounds to be Celine Dion whispering amidst a bunch of hollow synthetic harmony and someone playing a triangle over and over again. I don't think Leonard Bernstein used the triangle. I think he was a real-instruments-only kind of guy.

Back to the closet. It's clean. But tomorrow, right before our guests come for Thanksgiving, I know everything in the house that doesn't have a proper place or that belongs in a specific place that doesn't look very pretty will all be piled in it. The door will then be shut. No one will ever know we own seven robes, none of which anyone wears because they're super old and we prefer real clothes. Except I will know. Because after our guests leave, the crap in my closet won't be put back to its proper unpretty place and I'll be stuck with it until I drink another cup of tea and two grande white chocolate mochas and clean it all up.

Also, I now have eight piles of laundry in my room. They do not look pretty. My head hurts. I tried to donate blood this morning but they rejected me because they're discriminatory like that. Also because if you give blood with low iron, you'll pass out and die. Or sue them.

It is six o'eight. I should probably eat something other than the whip cream that came on top of my coffees. I should probably turn the bathroom light and the closet light off. I should probably take at least one pile of laundry downstairs where it might actually become clean. I should probably not be listening to West Side Story's Rumble because there's lots of jumps and bangs and tension and it is not helping my sugar crash. I should probably stop starting sentences with 'I should probably.'

I should probably stop now.

Drink lots of fluids, call if you feel sick, and no strenuous activity.

It's possible that I'm a moron.

I'm not saying it's true! Just possible.

Today, I gave blood. Everything was going fine, my iron levels were good, my temperature was fine (the second time round, I might be getting sick, yetch), I haven't had sex with a man who's had sex with a man who contradicted AIDS in Africa, yadda yadda yadda. Surprisingly, I was done rather quickly, then ate some cookies and off I went.

Right in time to seem my bus drive pass. Darn.

So, being the bright, intellectual, academically-inclined person that I am, I decided to walk.

One of the things they tell you after giving blood is to avoid strenuous activity. Now, I assumed that translated as, don't run a marathon, don't go rock climbing, do use this as an excuse not to vacuum.

Apparently, it also meant don't walk.

From the clinic to my house, it's about a thirty minute walk. Not a big deal. Off I went, humming 'Merry Chrisislamakwansica' under my breath.

Twenty five minutes into this walk, I realized something was wrong.

When texting to say I'd be home soon, I had to physically slow down because I couldn't concentrate on my phone and the path ahead. I'm a teenager: I can text anywhere anytime anyplace. This was not good.

I put my phone away and that was when I realized that if I didn't stop, my body was going to. I stopped and woah, dizziness. My heart was racing, my skin was clammy and I felt like I was a step away from fainting.

How exactly had I not noticed that?

I took a moment, but I was so close to home that it seemed ridiculous to stop.

I took another step.

Wrong move. I swayed but managed to stay upright long enough to think, oh gee I should sit, and then I sat. At the side of the road. Alone. In the dark.

Another two minutes and I'd be home! If I could just get off my ass...

A failed attempt at standing was all I needed to get out my phone and call home. Sure, it'd be a thirty second ride, but I was desperate. Last thing I needed was to wake up with bugs stabbing at me 'cause I conked out at the side of the road. Or worse.

I managed to stand and walk another thirty paces before I saw my ride. They didn't ask why I'd wanted to be picked up at the side of the road two minutes from home, and that was probably for the best.

Now I'm at home, lying in bed, studying the hole in my elbow, and wondering if a fear of needles is rational.

Yup, I'm a moron.

They're thoughtful that way.

This post is going to be honest, blunt and bloody.

This is what happens when you give blood with the Canadian Blood Services.

When you walk in, there's a smell. A really yucky, ugly smell that's gonna remind you of hospitals and clinics and dead people (but there's no dead people there, promise).

The building is a circle, or at least the one I go to is. You start right beside the cake and the cookies and the juice (I'm sure they do that on purpose, not just because it also makes layout sense), and you can't have any, you can't even look at it too much because in a second, you're going to be called over to a desk with a man behind it, a really nice, friendly man who's been taught to not scare you. Well, try to not scare you.

He's going to take a tiny little plastic thing and ask for your finger and you, not realizing what this tiny plastic thing is, are going to hold out your hand and feel a prick. He'll have already told you that he needs to do this to make sure you are plush full of iron. It's a pinprick. You may not even feel it. Imagine someone pinching your arm: this hurts less.

There'll be a little well of blood on the tip of your finger, but they'll try to cover it with their glove.

He's gonna take a drop and tell you if your iron is high enough. This is important. If it's not high enough, then it could be dangerous for your health to give blood so they're not gonna let you. But let's pretend that your iron level is fine.

Next comes paperwork. Mostly, it's about sex. Sex-sex not gender-sex but they don't want to know your most intimate details, just if you might have AIDS. All of the paperwork is online (just google them) so you can look at it in advance too.

Next, you'll go in this private room and someone will go ask you more questions (mostly about sex again) that you'll say no to, although there'll be a couple of yes's just to make sure you're paying attention. I promise they're not judging, they just want to be safe.

They're going to give you two stickers with barcodes on them and then leave the room. If you want to donate your blood, you take the appropriate barcode and stick it on your file. If you want to check for AIDS or other blood-related diseases, or just find out your blood type without donating, you choose the other barcode.

When the person comes back, all they'll see is a barcode, so again, there'll be no judgements.

Next comes the obvious part. The giving of blood part, the sharing of survival part, the big ass needle in your arm part. Breathe. Seriously. It's okay.

Now, you might think (wrongly) that since your arm needs to be bare (and if it's the middle of summer), it would be a good idea to wear a halter top. It is not. The bed/lounge chair/thing you are going to lie on is plastic.

Don't wear a halter top. You'll stick. My bad.

So you lie down, the nurse finds a nice vein while making small talk, and they'll set everything up.

I apparently have very small, invisible veins. I'm practically albino, so you'd think they'd be easy to see, but they're so ridiculously small that my nurse took quite a while to choose a vein because she wanted to be absolutely certain that there would only be one more prick to come. For me, that involved strapping up one arm, deciding that she wanted to try the other arm, finding that the other arm wasn't any better, and then going back to the first arm. You might think that's silly and time-consuming. I think I'd rather they check several times than leave me with a collapsed vein. So yeah, they're thoughtful that way.

They'll tell you when. My nurse told me that if I was going to look away, now would be the time. I did look away, since it was my first time, but it's not that bad.

Believe me, I'm a sissy.

The needle isn't that big. The prick doesn't take that long. The pain is not that bad.

Seriously. I'm a whiner, if it really hurt I would tell you and then be bitter about it the rest of my life. It's more like a sting than anything and it only takes a second and then you can't feel it anymore.

Blood. Right.

Typically, donations take five to ten minutes. A while ago my friend asked me how long and I said it depends on your blood pressure. It does depend on your blood pressure but said friend turned really pale and didn't want to go with me anymore, so I'm going to stick with five to ten minutes.

If you hand gets cold, which mine does, they'll give you a glove tied up that's filled with hot water to hold, and if you have lower blood pressure, which I do, they'll ask you to squeeze and unsqueeze it over and over again.

There are nurses everywhere and they are bent on making sure you are perfectly fine.

There was another woman there who, after donating and sitting there for a few minutes, was feeling dizzy. Immediately, there were three nurses surrounding her with ice and cold pads. Within another few minutes, she was fine.

I think my albino-ness caused them to be overly concerned, because thirty seconds couldn't go by without a different nurse coming up to me, taking a quick glance at my file (and reading that it was my first time) and asking me if I felt okay.

I felt just fine.

Okay, that's a lie.

I was sticking to the seat: that did not feel fine. My arm felt pretty normal though.

I watched the blood. Right as it starts, you can watch it run through the tube and you get to see how fast it's going. That's cool. Afterwards, it's just a brown tube.

(I got kinda sick of all the people asking me how I felt so I started texting random questions to my sister just so they'd stop asking me.)

Once you're done, they'll take the needle out (another sting, just for a second) and press a piece of gauze where it went in and ask you to hold it there. Five minutes later, they'll come around check to make sure it's done bleeding, and then tape a fresh piece of gauze on.

(Unless you're so friggin' albino that they want you to sit for another few minutes so they go get you a drink and make you sip it there. I tried telling them that I'm naturally this ghostly but she didn't buy it.)

And then that's it! You get cookies and cake (if you're lucky and it's someone birthday) and juice and volunteers make small talk as you sit. There are people all around you--at all times--making sure that you are okay. They make you stay for a few minutes afterwards because if you faint, they are going to catch you. They're there for you. You are going to be fine.

You should know that from the moment I entered the building to the moment I left, I never once saw blood. First it was covered by the person's glove and then a band-aid, then in a tube, then under gauze, but I never saw myself bleeding.

On Greys Anatomy, there was a guy played by Seth Green who had an exposed carotid artery that burst. Lexie practically bathed in blood until she managed to stop the bleeding.

I know that that didn't really happen, but it could, it does, and you could help.

It's in you to give.