PA: Blog-City // 05
January 7th – Plasma
I had to get up at 4am for this. Naturally, with my schedule and Friday being the one day they had an opening I took the earliest freaking appointment that they could create for me. So there I was, before the sunlight, driving my car while still half asleep, metnally foloowing a crude set of directions to the facility that promised cash for what I was about to do. I arrived on time actually. Before one time is probably more accurate. I had given myself a half hour of seeking time because I wasn’t exactly sure I could find the place on my first try. But, somehow, I went right to it. So I sat in the parking lot and waited listening to music with the car off of course to conserve gasoline and eventually deciding to screw gasoline because I was freezing to death without a heater. Once the techs had arrived they suited up in their white long coats and their rubber gloves and their face masks… and then there was me. I stepped in and the process began almost immediately.
They pulled me aside into another room and began to ask me a series of questions.
“No, I do not have AIDS.”
“No, I have not slept with people with AIDS.”
“No, I have not slept with a man since or after 1977.”
“No, I have never been to Africa.”
“No, I haven’t had a blood transfusion.”
“No ma’am, I swear, I don’t have sex with men.”
“No, I do not have an eating disorder.”
“Quite sure ma’am, no men. Ever.”
“No, I haven’t ever injected drugs intravenously.”
“No, I haven’t had sex with anyone who ever did.”
“No I have never been to Europe.”
“No, I don’t have diabetes.”
“Do I have what?”
“I’m sorry I don’t think I can pronouce that but I’m pretty sure I don’t have it… what does it do?”
“… Oh that is disgusting. No. No I don’t have that. Holy crap. That is sick…”
Then we went onto the various other test that would prove I was a completely healthy and in fact normal human being.
“Okay, I need your finger. Hold still.”
“Okay.”
She places this little pastic box over my right middle finder and smiles. There is a rapid clicking noise and I am suddenly aware that the appendage in question is taking damage. She removes the little pastic box and smiles again. “There we go.” She begins to funnel the blood oozing out of it into a small plastic tube. When it doesn’t bleed as much as she wants it to- she squeezes and begins talking to it. “C’mon, bleed. C’mon out now, not gonna hurt ya.” When she’s got her tubeful she sends me out to the machines where another tech greets me with a smile and a gesture to the big red squigly thing beside her. Apparently I’m supposed to sit in it. So I do. It’s comfy enough I guess… Then she orders me to roll up my sleeves. She’s got to test my viens first. Yeah, why didn’t I think of that… She check them both out and after a collective six minutes of poking and prodding she decides to go with my right arm. “Okay thanks! Go back that way now.” She points to another room. “Okay.” I get to the other room where a second doc is waiting with several sheets of paper and a list of questions.
“Pretty sure, I don’t have AIDS.”
“No, I haven’t slept with anyone who has AIDS.”
“NO! I DON’T HAVE SEX WITH MEN!”
And so on and so forth. Finally she calls it good and sends me out to wait. Great… I go sit in a big purple chair while they decide which seat I’ll occupy during the procedure. I’m still asleep you see, so the waiting time actually does me some good. When they call my name I get up and walk towards the mass of red squiggly things clotted together with a few large men and women in them. “Lie down here.” The woman instructs me. And I’m thinking- is this organization run exclusively by females? Then she pulls out a very large syringe. Yep… got to be. “Just relax.” She says. Sure thing… The pre-procedure procedure takes plenty of time. She’s got to get all her tubes together, rewire the machine, explain the machine, ask me if I feel woozy, make sure I’ve eaten something of substance before we begin, hook everything up, but three strips of tape on my arm, take my blood pressure, again, turn the machine on and make sure everything is sterile. “Ready?”
The little ban around my arm inflates and the machine beside me bleeps happily. “Sure.” She begins tapind a series of tubes to my arm. These tubes run up and series of loops into the device thats going to be doing all the work while the staff stands by and laughs at you. She makes sure I’ve got a good vien going, AKA, one that’s sticking up enough that you could bite it and it would hemmorage. Then she attaches this harpoon to the end of the tube. “Okay… all ready.” The harpoon enters my arm. This is designed to suck up your body. She gives me a bicycle handle and tells me to squeeze it keep the blood going. The machine emits a happy series of maddening bleeps. And the tubes begin to fill red, swirling up and around the various components of the machine into a little spinner that separates my blood into its two primary components. Red cells, and plasma. The blood trickles into a clear plastic cup while the plasma, now fully separated, is funneled into what closely resembles the common household squirtbottle. 
It sucks up my fluids for about two minutes, then the machine stops. And the blood in the clear plastic cup begins to slowly drain because its full. Its going back out the machine, through the tubes, through the needle, and back into my body. Sitting there watching it happening and thinking about it as happens, becomes, as you might expect, really weird. After the clear plastic cup is empty, the whole thing starts back up again, sucking fresh blood from my body.
An hour later, the little squirt bottle is full of thin yellowy liquid and I’ve had my innards extracted and reinserted about eight times. The machine pours the last few drops back to where they came from, and then it begins injecting a frosty bag of saline into the arm to replace the fluid I lost. (Yeah, as if my body won’t know the difference. What’s this? We keep losing the immune system? Goodness if this continues much longer, the first time someone sneezes near him, we’re all goners! What? Saltwater you say? Oh of course, that wil be a fine replacement, it has no biological properties at all and does absolutely nothing for us but I think it might just work!) THe stuff is freezing cold and being injected clean into my viens, a few moments later, my entire arm feels like I’ve shoved it into a pile of snow. This takes about four minutes. Then the saline solution is unhooked and the machine alters someone, somewhere, that I’m done. So someone, comes out of nowhere, and pulls the harpoon from my arm. Gives me a big wad of bandage and straps it on thouroughly, tells me to leave it there for two hours, and sends me towards the counter. I walk towards the counter, my left arm throbbing doesn’t seem quite natural because the needle was inserted into my right arm. But never the less. I make to the desk, they hand me a twenty-dollar bill, and thank me for my time. As I’m heading out the door, she calls out to me. “Say, do you want to make another appointment?”
I go back in on Sunday at 1:00pm. I get $40 bucks this time. Fifty if I bring I a friend. So I think after church I’m going to club somebody unassuming and stuff them in my backseat. ^_^ Just make sure it isn’t you.
- (monsterbox)
