The Aerie
The 9/11 anniversary is upon us, which fact was brought home to me
this morning when I went to give blood.
I first gave blood last year, on 9/12, as a reaction to the events of
9/11 (combined with the fact that I was working next door to the Red
Cross center at the time).
I had had several false starts before that. Once I raced to a
company-sponsored blood drive, only to discover upon arrival that I
had a fever and high blood pressure.
The first time I was very anxious about giving blood, but now that
I've done it a couple of times it's a non event. Particularly today --
the guy who tapped my vein was so skillful I didn't feel anything. Not
a pinch, not a nip. He said "Make a fist," and I waited, and I waited,
and then he put tape on my arm and I looked and the needle was in
place.
I spoke with a fellow donor afterwards, while we were eating the
snacks and juice provided. He had received his two-gallon pin, and I
asked how long he'd been donating. "I started last year after 9/11,"
he said.
I was confused -- I'd donated every 56 days since 9/11, and I was
nowhere near a gallon. Then he revealed that he's been giving
platelets -- they take out the red blood cells, and put back the blood
plasma. They can take twice as much (in terms of total red blood cells
if not volume) at once, and can do so every 30 days rather than every
56.
So I'll have to see about going that route soon. Not for the sake of
getting gallon pins faster, but because apparently it's more useful to
the Red Cross. Once again, I'm a little anxious, but not terribly so.
When I was in college I used to give blood plasma for cash, which
sounds like the same process, but reversed -- take out the fluids, put
back the cells. Had a few disasters there, which had soured me on
giving blood.
Once a nurse had clipped a pair of scissor-like clamps to her lapel:
when she turned away from my couch the clamp handle swung out and
caught the tubing running to the needle in my arm. Fortunately I saw
this, and as she stepped away I gripped the tube and jumped up to
follow her, lest she tear the needle right out of my vein. But it
kinda left me nervous last year, when the new Red Cross building went
up right next to my employer.
Then came 9/11, and suddenly my fears took on a new perspective,
appearing much smaller than they had. But they're still there.
Everytime I wince before they stick the needle in me I think about the
kind of terror that would make a 100-story leap a preferred choice,
the kind of pain that one would feel when a loved one never returned,
and it makes a needle-stick a trivial thing.
I spoke to a fellow yesterday and he wanted to make an appointment for
next Wednesday, 9/11. I said, "I don't know -- that's going to be a
weird day." What I meant by that, although I didn't feel comfortable
saying this to a mere business acquaintance, was that I think I'm
going to feel a lot of repercussions from what was, at least for me, a
very traumatic event.
His response to me was, "Wednesday will only be as weird as people
make it. For me, business as usual."
Something seems wrong about that. It seems like denial. I mean, you
can try and pretend that 9/11 didn't happen, but it did. And it
changed things, and it OUGHT to change things. It's called learning,
adapting, and changing, it's called survival. If you pretend it didn't
happen, you're just asking for trouble, you're just asking for it to
happen again.
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Posted by Albatross at September 5, 2002 12:00 AM