The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2005-12-23 12:24 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2005-12-23 12:24 pm
Giving Blood
I’ve never given blood before.
I gave blood for the first time yesterday, and as I lay on the bed in the air-conditioned caravan watching myself bleed down a clear tube, the blood a darker red than I’ve ever seen from a wound, I contemplated what I was doing.
Blood is such a powerful symbol – blood has been spilt by accident and on the battlefield for ideals or for greed, it is a euphemism for family and lineage, mixing the blood of two people has been used to sign pacts or assert friendship. Blood represents death and life and family and love and friendship and passion and duty and senseless waste. People will eagerly spill blood in anger or give of themselves for someone they love – but I believe that willingly putting yourself through pain and stress, giving a part of yourself for a faceless other who needs it, putting that part of yourself into a pool of other people’s donations where it will be merely one of the bags of blood in a hospital’s cupboard, is one of the most amazing acts a person can perform.
Watching the doctor carry away the IV bag containing my blood was perhaps the strangest part of the experience. It seemed different once I had been disconnected from the bag, as though that very disconnection was the point where it became no longer a part of me, rather than the moment it flowed into the needle. The blood was pinker than it had looked in the tube, not a true red, because of the translucent white of the IV bag, and it was still warm from the heat of my body. That was my blood. But it wasn’t mine anymore.
There were actually three IV bags; two empty ones were held to the full one with a rubber band. Later, each will have a third of the drawn blood separated into them. Those very three bags that I saw will, at some point, be connected to another person, possibly three other people. I probably won’t know the receiver(s) of my blood – I hope that no one I know needs it. But someone will. At some stage over the next forty-two days, the blood that came from my body will be draining into someone who is sick or injured, someone who will have a similar needle in their vein as the very same blood runs in the opposite direction.
Wow.
I hate needles. The last time I tried to give blood, they decided I was too distraught to continue and it’s taken me five years to pluck up the courage to try again. Today I was as calm as I could imagine being, controlling my breathing through the whole thing, even when the doctor pulled out the biggest diameter needle I’ve ever seen and pushed it into my skin.
I felt a little light headed as the blood left my body. I was a bit shaky and dehydrated for the rest of the day, despite my best efforts to drink my way through enough water to get the council around to make sure I was obeying the water restrictions. I woke up with a killer headache this morning.
Blood donation is by no means stress free or painless, but it really is easy.
All you have to do is lie back and think of the people you’re helping, the people who are somehow more real because you will never know who they are, or even if your blood simply passed the expiry date before anyone needed it. Some day soon, my red blood cells will be carrying oxygen from someone’s lungs to their brains. My plasma will be keeping their blood pressure up. My platelets will be clotting their wounds. My blood will be keeping them alive. And that is a very special thing for me.
I’ve already made my appointment for twelve weeks time, when the blood van comes back to my area. I may never have given blood before. But I know I will give blood again.
I gave blood for the first time yesterday, and as I lay on the bed in the air-conditioned caravan watching myself bleed down a clear tube, the blood a darker red than I’ve ever seen from a wound, I contemplated what I was doing.
Blood is such a powerful symbol – blood has been spilt by accident and on the battlefield for ideals or for greed, it is a euphemism for family and lineage, mixing the blood of two people has been used to sign pacts or assert friendship. Blood represents death and life and family and love and friendship and passion and duty and senseless waste. People will eagerly spill blood in anger or give of themselves for someone they love – but I believe that willingly putting yourself through pain and stress, giving a part of yourself for a faceless other who needs it, putting that part of yourself into a pool of other people’s donations where it will be merely one of the bags of blood in a hospital’s cupboard, is one of the most amazing acts a person can perform.
Watching the doctor carry away the IV bag containing my blood was perhaps the strangest part of the experience. It seemed different once I had been disconnected from the bag, as though that very disconnection was the point where it became no longer a part of me, rather than the moment it flowed into the needle. The blood was pinker than it had looked in the tube, not a true red, because of the translucent white of the IV bag, and it was still warm from the heat of my body. That was my blood. But it wasn’t mine anymore.
There were actually three IV bags; two empty ones were held to the full one with a rubber band. Later, each will have a third of the drawn blood separated into them. Those very three bags that I saw will, at some point, be connected to another person, possibly three other people. I probably won’t know the receiver(s) of my blood – I hope that no one I know needs it. But someone will. At some stage over the next forty-two days, the blood that came from my body will be draining into someone who is sick or injured, someone who will have a similar needle in their vein as the very same blood runs in the opposite direction.
Wow.
I hate needles. The last time I tried to give blood, they decided I was too distraught to continue and it’s taken me five years to pluck up the courage to try again. Today I was as calm as I could imagine being, controlling my breathing through the whole thing, even when the doctor pulled out the biggest diameter needle I’ve ever seen and pushed it into my skin.
I felt a little light headed as the blood left my body. I was a bit shaky and dehydrated for the rest of the day, despite my best efforts to drink my way through enough water to get the council around to make sure I was obeying the water restrictions. I woke up with a killer headache this morning.
Blood donation is by no means stress free or painless, but it really is easy.
All you have to do is lie back and think of the people you’re helping, the people who are somehow more real because you will never know who they are, or even if your blood simply passed the expiry date before anyone needed it. Some day soon, my red blood cells will be carrying oxygen from someone’s lungs to their brains. My plasma will be keeping their blood pressure up. My platelets will be clotting their wounds. My blood will be keeping them alive. And that is a very special thing for me.
I’ve already made my appointment for twelve weeks time, when the blood van comes back to my area. I may never have given blood before. But I know I will give blood again.