I Blew It

So I finally made it back over to the Red Cross. I didn’t make an appointment, I just showed up. I don’t think I spent much more time there than I would if I had made the appointment. And I don’t know if I mentioned a prior post that you can’t really donate in someone’s name. You can donate for yourself if, for instance, you are undergoing surgery and may require a transfusion. But for the rest of us average Janes they just take your blood and some of it goes to hospitals and clinics for patient use and some of it goes to labs for experimentation, so who really knows where mine is going. Regardless, if it’s possible that I’m replenishing the overall blood supply on behalf of a loved one who has drawn from it in recent months in some rough estimation, that’s good enough for me. My primary reason for this tangent is that I really blew it this time. What’s the first thing they tell you to do when going in to donate blood? DRINK LOTS OF WATER. What did I fail to do today? DRINK LOTS OF WATER. In fact, in retrospect I drank very little over the course of the day, so besides a cup of chai this morning and some turkey noodle soup for lunch, I really didn’t consume much fluid at all. And boy did I pay for it. I’m slowly rehydrating but I felt pretty lousy when I left the donation center. And my arm actually hurts. That's never happened before. I suspect I'll have some fancy drug-shooter-looking tracks in the days to come. Thankfully, I’m off to loaf on the couch with a big stinky mutt dog any moment now. That usually fixes most things wrong with the world.

All joking aside, the moral of this story is DRINK LOTS OF WATER. Especially if you are charted to donate blood. Regularly drinking lots of water and donating blood are things you should be doing that anyway.