Written @ 9:26 p.m. on 2007-09-03
Plasma For Sale
Today I sold my plasma.
BoSo was going, and asked me to go along, so I did. We drove into the poorest part of the city in BoSo's furry pickup truck. I say furry because it has faux cheetah fur glued to the sides. We listened to guns n' roses.
Inside the clinic, everything was a clinical baby blue. We were signing in when BoSo discovered he had forgotten his social security card. They wouldn't let him continue the process without it, so I had to go it alone. I gave him my Jim Morrison novel to entertain himself with during the wait.
They asked me about my tattoos and piercings, and drew a little picture of each one on the outline of a man on a paper. They asked if I was from africa, or if I had been exposed to mad cow disease, or if I paid for sex (we all pay for sex in the long run, honey....). They checked my arms for track marks. They took my tempurature,weighed me, rubbed my belly, looked up my nose and tested my blood for anemia. They made me pee in a cup. They gave me a pamphlet on aids and then made me take a quiz on it. This went on for hours. No joke. THEN they decided that I was good and clean, and they decided to take my blood.
They brought me into this big room full of people in big blue loungers, kinda like a dentist chair. They poked at my veins.
"They are small,"one nurse said, marching me up to another nurse.
"They are fine. They are just deep."
"Are you sure? I want you to be totally comfortable before you jab me with a needle," I said.
"You're fine, honey," she said, and she showed me my own blue lounger and my own plasma making machine.
"See, we take your blood, and it goes into this tube, and it spins in this centrifuge, and the plasma goes in this bottle, and then your red blood cells go back into you. See? Questions?"
Gulp. They stuck me with the needle, which didn't hurt at all, and there I sat watching the "Cable Guy" in a room full of surly characters who needed money real bad. I FUCKING HATE JIM CARREY.
So there I sat, for 48 minutes, which is the time it takes for the machine to do four cycles of sucking my blood, spinning it, putting the plasma in the can and returning the leftovers back into me.
I began to wish I hadn't given my book away. I began to fidget, which is not allowed. To avoid the movie, I took notice of who exactly does this sort of selling of bodily fluids. There were three brown-skinned young men, gangsta types, one with an extremely big mouth who was repeatedly cussing and trying to piss people off. There was a middle-aged, red haired spanish speaking lady. There was a handsome, well-dressed, middle-aged black guy reading the paper. There was a grey haired lady in shorts with a romance novel who looked slightly crazy. And me.
I felt guilty leaving BoSo in the waiting room so long.
Mercifully, the movie ended, and the nurses made us all guess a random number. They gave the winner a pair of tickets to the county fair. They started talking about wanting to go home. They repeatedly asked the loud mouth asshole to watch his language.
I wasn't feeling too bad. I was feeling kind of good. I was all finished and they were unplugging me and thanking me very much.
I got up to go home, and all of a sudden, the nurses' voices seemed as if they were coming from underwater, and I felt very, very nauseous. Not the flu kind of nauseous where you want to throw up because your tummy hurts, this was the pregnant nauseous where your whole body is involved in revolution. My head throbbed and my knees felt weak.They handed me a barf bag and set me back on a dentist's chair. How did that happen? I was totally fine until I stood up. I only sent my blood through a little machine to be edited by technology. What's the big deal?
I settled. The nurses were nice. They brought me some gross juice. I regained composure, and collected my money. I was so happy to see BoSo had stayed all this time, that I gave him a big hug and interrupted his hitting on a nurse.
We are going back on Wednesday. I'll get double the money if I come back. I'm going to call ahead and make sure they are playing NO Jim Carrey movies. I fucking hate that guy.