In the Same Vein

     After more than four decades of being a blood donor, my good vein has finally been pumped dry.  I like donating blood. It's desperately needed, free, and comes with refills. And it's not as if I had other plans for bleeding on my to do list. I could not give blood in college because, believe it or not, I did not weigh the requisite 110 pounds. I started donating when we moved to Helena. The retired nurse volunteers who assisted donors to the snack table (in case they should faint) were so feeble they would have blown over in a stiff puff of wind. After that I donated at a state-of-the-art facility in Denver where I got such a bad poke, the bruise lasted for days. Later I donated at the old courthouse in Kalispell, accompanied by my toddlers who volunteers spoiled with snacks while I lay bleeding. In those trusting days, your donor number was also your social security number. Church ladies and service organizations supplied sandwiches and cookies for the required post-bleed feed.
     Then we got fancy--bar coded donor cards, computerized check-in, with a scanner the elderly volunteers manning the entry desk treat like a deadly, but sacred cobra, tilt donor chairs, television so you can veg and hemorrhage at the same time, monitors that beep when the bag is full and store bought snacks to protect us from the dangers home cooked food.  Before leaving the entry desk you have to at least pretend to read 15 pages of donor instructions, restrictions and prohibitions. In the donor area, a phlebotomist verifies your I.D. and asks what sex you consider yourself. If you consider yourself a woman but have an Adam's apple, you flunk. They take your temperature and blood pressure. To check iron levels they place your swabbed finger behind a plastic shield lest blood should squirt out of your finger and into their unprotected eyes, though the only time this occurred  was on "Dracula, Dead and Loving It".  Then you take a computerized (and extremely politically incorrect) test about the restrictions you just reread in the waiting area to see if you qualify to give blood. This is why I will not miss donating. Paperwork. The assumption that you are unclean. No matter how many times you donate, there are no shortcuts. It's like volunteering to go through TSA security after your flight has been cancelled.
     But, as I said, I am tapped out. My only good vein is in my left arm and, sometime this summer, it shriveled. I have been deferred before--low iron level. I can fix that. High blood pressure. Meds fixed that.  At first, they blamed my inadequate vein on dehydration and, since it was blistering hot last summer, I could believe it. But the heat has gone and my vein has not come back.  It succumbed to the same phenomenon that has claimed so much of my body--old age. So the next time the Red Cross calls, I will ask them to remove me from their list. I'm sure they will be disappointed, they are disappointed that I don't bring a buddy with me to the bloodletting. After 40 years in the same location, Lefty has left the (body) building. And I don't even mind that my sacrifice was in vein.