bla blood bla

I finished work at 17h today and ran part way and walked quickly the rest to catch a 485 bus that would either come at 17h05 or 17h20, but the bus and I arrived at the same time, at 17h15 and so I managed to get onto it. It was very full, having come from the city; but four or five stops further it emptied out to a more reasonable occupancy.

Other drivers were terrible on this rush hour time of taking a bus for about the 20 minute ride. I took it to get to Kirkland's Hema-Quebec site as I had a scheduled plasma donation to make. The bus driver had to honk numerous times at the bad drivers out there.

Everything went as normal; in fact, better than usual as the nurse who put the needle in me found the right spot and the blood flow was quicker than normal into the machine. We talked about it and she said that when I usually come in the morning my body has not had enough time to take all of the water I drink in preparation and make the blood flow easily whereas in the late afternoon I have been up and about all day, drinking and eating and moving about, and so the blood flows more easily.

However, there was a problem a bit before the mid point of the second cycle of withdrawing my blood to get the plasma out of it. The machine that does this stopped suddenly and started beeping. It is a rare occurrence and so all three of the on duty nurses at this time of day came to see what was up.

It turns out that the bowl into which my blood is deposited that spins at around 7500rpm had a flaw in it that visual inspection was unable to discover. That flaw saw some of my blood exit the bowl inside the shaft within which it spins making a big literally bloody mess. There is a lid to that shaft so the mess was contained.

Given what happened, the blood that was still in that bowl had to be discarded, my plasma donation aborted, and now, due to Hema-Quebec's policy for instances such as these, I am blocked from making any donations for four months. I was given a small card telling me what would be the next date I could donate, curiously it ended up being the leap day of 2024.

They (the nurses) felt bad about this as they and I both are happy that I go every two weeks, they were apologetic about the policy that blocks me for so long. As I was leaving I said that I would see them next year and we very early wished each other a Merry Christmas and HNY.

I take such things in stride; there isn't anything that can be done about it, so why get upset? One of the questions that gets asked as part of the eligibility questionnaire is if I have had a tattoo within the last three months. Heh, so maybe I can get a tattoo now since there are four months to my next donation.