Have you ever tried to do something good only to have it totally flop on you? That was me last night. Here's what happened:
A few weeks ago a sign up sheet went around church to donate blood. Usually I just pass it along but this time I felt prompted to sign Kurt and myself up so I did for a 5:45 appointment. A few days later I mentioned it to Kurt and he was not happy. "WHAT? No, no, no, I won't do that! I worked hard to make this blood and I would like to keep it."
I have been married to the guy for over 12 years and have never known him to be squeamish about needles. But when I thought back on it, the only time I can remember him getting poked was when I had to take him to the ER for his neck and then he was in so much pain he didn't even care if they poked him. Interesting . . .
Well, no mercy here, I told him he would be fine and to just do it. I told him to think of all the people he may help by donating and that some day if any of our family needed blood, we would be very thankful to that person who had donated. He would just kind of roll his eyes at me and say he wouldn't do it and I would tell him that he would. He tends to like to tease me about things and I figured this was one of those times.
So I dragged him kicking and screaming (ok, maybe that's a LITTLE dramatic but he was still whining on the way there and walking in the parking lot). "They are going to take too much blood out and I won't be able to walk" he says to me as we are walking in. "Look, there's a 70-something year old walking out and he seems just fine. Your a strong, healthy adult male, I am sure you will be fine too." This was seriously our conversation. Sheesh.
Anyways, we show up at our 5:45 appointment time. Now Kurt had a meeting to be at at 7 pm so we were a little tight on time but I figured we would be ok. Here is where red flag #1 popped up. The appointment time meant nothing. It was first come first serve and it was going to take about an hour. WHAT? Why did you have me sign up for a time slot if it meant nothing???!!! Urgh!
Side note: I have decided that I can't do anything during the week because it really messes up with getting homework done. It just really kills any hope of being on top of it. So I knew going during the week was going to be hard but the girls didn't have that much so I thought it would be ok. So we had left the kids at home doing homework and told them we would be back in 1/2 hour.
Back to the story - so now we had a decision to make: leave and not donate or wait and see if it would be faster and Kurt could still make his meeting. Hmmm - well you know what Kurt voted for, with a big ol' smile on his face I might add, but in the end we decided to wait and see if we could donate and still have time for him to make the meeting. So we waited with Kurt smiling the whole time thinking he was going to get out of this. Well we ended up running into our Bishop who informed us that Kurt didn't need to be at that meeting. Smile quickly faded, poor guy. We now had plenty of time to donate.
Now I know how this sounds. It sounds like Kurt was the problem but he wasn't. I am very happy to report that he was a total STUD through it all and donated no problem. Turns out, I was the problem child.
We decided that I would go first and he would hold Trevor and then he would go while I held Trev. So I am finally called and go sit in my chair. Now, I have been poked more times than I can count. Anyone who has been pregnant knows that they take a ton of blood several times during the pregnancy, then at the hospital you get the IV and plus with all my labs for my doctors, I have been poked A LOT. It doesn't phase me at all anymore and I totally watch and everything. Well, have you seen the needles they use when you donate blood? They shouldn't be called needles, they are more like pipes. The are stinkin' HUGE!
So she goes to stick the pipe in my arm and she can't get the vein. It is a huge one right there but, for what ever reason, she can't get it. So she is digging around in my arm with the pipe and I am like "hello, that is a pipe you have shoved in my arm!" She finally gives up and calls a co-pipe installer over and she gives it a try. A little more digging and presto - she got it. Whew! I wasn't sure I was going to take much more. Ok, so now I'm flowing. Awesome.
But then the lady notices that my bag has stopped filling up. She has me roll the thing in my hand, then she pulls on the skin trying to get the flow going again, then she un-tapes the needle to try to adjust it and POP out comes the needle. Not expecting this, she is not prepared for the flow of blood that comes pouring out of my open main line. It would be fun to be dramatic and say it was squirting everywhere but it wasn't. She quickly put a gauze over it and tries to contain the needle that is flying around on the end of the tube. She has me raise my arm over my head.
No biggie, I think. They can just re-insert it (not looking forward to that but o-well). But they can't. That bag is done. Ok, just do another. It looked like that bag was maybe only 1/4 full. Nope. Can't do that either. Turns out they got enough that I can't donate again for whatever the time frame is. Then, and this was the kicker, they didn't get enough blood to use. WHAT?!!! Too much for me to donate again but not enough to use - are you kidding me?
I felt like telling the lady: do you know what I went through to get here tonight? Suffered (ok, dramatic again) weeks of a whining husband, dragged him through the parking lot, waited an hour to get up here, had a pipe shoved all over in my arm and now you are telling me you can't even use it! URGH!
Another side note: this is coming off a week of very little sleep because Trevor got a major cold and ended up with a double ear infection and hasn't been sleeping for obvious reasons.
So I was not the happiest camper, as hopefully you can understand. So then it's Kurt's turn. I looked at him and said "we can go. You don't have to do this." I didn't feel like dealing with him passing out, throwing up, whining the whole time or anything else that might happen so I thought we should just leave before any more drama. But as I mentioned, he was a stud and had no problem. In fact he told me that he was just messing with me and had no problem with giving blood. Awesome.
So by the time we left it was 2 HOURS later, now 7:45. Kids are at home having had no dinner, who knows what the homework status is and now it's time for bed. Urgh! And it was still "flopping" this morning as I was trying to help Hailey finish the homework she didn't know how to do last night.
Let's just say that I probably won't be signing up to donate blood again for awhile.
