BLOOD LETTING

So, call me a sorry looser but this is the first time I have given blood. The actual blood letting took ten minutes tops, fifteen if you count leaving me stranded while the technician unhooked the poor fellow next to me whose needle wasn't in deep enough . I couldn't get a good look but think perhaps his life's blood was emptying on the technicians shoes.

I asked how much blood they take and it's un-technically a pint. Which, if you listened to your mother, is a pound. "A pint's a pound, the world a round." So I lost a pound today but on the way out they made me take tasty snacks so perhaps I wouldn't faint in the parking lot or, if I did, the Oreo cookies and the Lorna Doone Shortbread cookies would break my fall. I ate the cookies so I can say good-bye to loosing that pound.

It took an hour to read all the reasons why a person can't give blood.

• You can't have lived anywhere in the United Kingdom since when Churchill was the Big Boss.


• You can't have had the s-e-x word with anyone who has ever done a deviant thing in their life.


• You can't give blood if you have done any number of awful things since 1977. After reading all those rules you wish your eyeballs would have fallen out before you read them.


• You can't give blood if you take a plethora of drugs.


• If you are anemic you can't give blood--I was not anemic. I was so not anemic that I should give blood as often as possible. I can thank my trusty cast iron skillet, which I love.


• You can't give blood if you have lived five years in about 80 European countries--and if you've lived in them for five years, they are now called by a different name and you wouldn't recognize the name of your own country, so you might think you are safe to give blood, but, obviously you aren't.


• You can't have looked at anyone who has had a smallpox vaccination


• Kissed anyone who has a tattoo.


• If you have a fever, go home--but if your fever is way below normal, like mine, then it's okay. I was so low they should have given me heated blankets. Did they? No. They kept the room temperature at a balmy 58 degrees--or 14.444444 degrees for any of those countries that weigh cooking ingredients instead of using the ever so handy cup measurements--so when I was finally released I could only shuffle out on frozen limbs.


• If you have had some dura-thingy membrane transplant on your dura, then go home and take your poor dura and it's membrane with you.


• If you have Mad Cow Disease or anyone in your family, including unborn children who are not yet conceived, have had/or plan to have, Mad Cow then go live in Britain but they call Mad Cow by it's technical name, Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD) so you won't be alarmed and get the bovine staggers and fall over. If you have only had Annoyed Cow Disease I don't know what you are supposed to do but I don't think you can donate.


• If you have HIV or have lost ten pounds you can't donate. All the dieters, especially all the Weight Watchers who are on maintenance, had to leave the building by a back door.


• If you live with someone with HIV then you shouldn't brush your teeth with their toothbrush.


• If you have a cough you CAN donate--you don't have to bend over first--but you have to feel good, so you should drink a Coke and eat a Twinkies and watch an episode of M.A.S.H. before coming.


• If you have a chronic illness but you aren't dead then you CAN donate. I guess they feed your blood to lab rats because I sure as heck wouldn't want it if I were lying in a hospital bed, all pale and faltering.


• If you have had cancer and it was treated successfully you can donate blood. WHAT? Are they nuts? We all know people who have been cured of cancer only to have it pop up again in another time zone of the body.


• There were about a hundred other rules which I have forgotten because, for some reason--which probably could be cured by getting a dura membrane transplant--after the first 45 minutes of reading the rules, my eyes glazed over, like a Krispy Kreme donut--which they did not serve.

Giving blood, was a real experience, which I hope to repeat in eight weeks--if the room is warm and they have Lorna Doone Shortbread cookies and Oreos.

PS They also use your blood for testing so I'm thinking your very blood could be the deciding factor of whether that new Passion Pink lipstick is safe for laboratory rats to wear.

PPS. If you want to see any of the rules I missed click here. Notice how clever I am to make the link blood-red, even though some of my blood is missing and my dura is oxygen deprived.