March 7, 2001
Dear Everyone:
We had another Blood Drive at work this week. When I say “at work”, I really mean up the highway at Company Park in “Pleasanton”. Even when we had three dozen people in “Livermore” (we’re down to about 11), that wasn’t enough to warrant bringing around the Blood Mobile. If we want to donate blood we can jolly well go up to the Park for it.
They generally hold a Drive once each quarter, unless they’re desperate. Last December, they needed blood so badly that they scheduled a special Drive exactly eight weeks to the day after the previous one. This one seemed a little more “regular”.
There have been a lot of changes from the Good Old Days when I used to get a call from the blood bank every nine weeks because they knew I was good for it. (For one thing, I lived on the Peninsula and that was a different bank.) Then they’d call and ask, “Can you come to the downtown branch some time this week?”
Now it’s all done with email and Web Sites. An email goes out to all employees in the “Pleasanton” area well in advance of the Drive. Plus the blood bank sends me a card in the (snail) mail, just in case I missed the one at work. Donors with appointments are given preference over “walk-ins”, although walk-ins are certainly welcome.
So, when I get the email, I check my (online) calendar to see if I’m available one of those days. (Another improvement is holding the Drive for shorter hours over two days instead of all in one day.) If I’m going to be around, I pick a day and time. Then I log onto the Web Site. I’m in their database, so I only have to identify which Drive and my name and they know the rest. Available times are shown with radio buttons (those little circles that you click in to select) and I pick the one that works best for me.
On Drive day, I leave my cubicle (turning the computer and all lights off, of course, we’re in the middle of an Energy Crisis for God’s Sake!) 30-45 minutes before my scheduled time. It takes about 15 minutes to drive up to the Park. Another 15 minutes to find a parking place and walk several blocks to the building where the Drive takes place. This allows me about 15 minutes for my pulse rate to slow down from the walk.
Some people (read: Nurses) find it difficult to believe that I can have a standing pulse rate of 85-90 and it’s perfectly normal. Once my pulse was nearly 100 and the nurse wouldn’t take me if it didn’t go down. I lay on a flat table and about every five minutes she would come back to see if my pulse had gone down. Needless to say, nothing makes my pulse rate go up faster than making me wait an extra half-hour while you keep taking my pulse.
So, after my little rest, it’s time to sign up and get The Form. If you’ve registered ahead, they have your Form with all of the usual stuff filled in by computer (name, address, blood type, etc.). The Form has a lot more questions than they used to ask. Used to be they wanted to know if you were reasonably healthy.
Now they want to know if I’ve been taking medications that I’ve a) never heard of and b) can’t begin to pronounce. (I assume that if I’ve never heard of it, I haven’t been taking it and say, No.) They also want to know if I’ve been to any number of Central African countries that I’ve barely ever heard of. Followed by lots of questions that boil down to… “Have you, since 1977, had sex with anyone who had sex with anyone they shouldn’t have?” No, no and no.
When you finally get through all the questions, and the mini-physical and get onto one of the nifty new portable chairs that they use instead of the old flat tables, it takes all of about 10 minutes to siphon off a pint or so. (Another improvement: Little squishy-balls instead of taped up rolls of paper towels.) Then the Payoff.
Cookies. Also donuts and crackers and sometimes a peel-off-stick-on “button” that reads, “Be nice to me, I gave blood”. And then there’s the juice. Used to be, you got a Dixie Cup with either pineapple or grapefruit juice, poured from a half-gallon can. These days, it’s little juice boxes. These are donated, so apple juice is always in attendance. But there are usually plenty of other flavors as well.
As soon as you sit down, someone offers you a donut and a juice box. (Hidden agenda: You just gave blood. Do you still posses the mental acuity and the manual dexterity to get the little plastic straw out of its pouch and poke it into the correct end of the box?) If you can pass the juice box test, they let you go back to work.
If you want, they’ll even give you a cute little quarter-liter bottle of water to take with you (as if we didn’t have two full-size water coolers in “Livermore”). Heck, they’ll let you take two.
In other news…
Mother arrives here on Friday. Last month, “Marshall” booked us a couple of rooms at a hotel in Monterey. We drive down on Sunday and return on Tuesday. At some point in time, we’re going to a nice restaurant to celebrate my 50th birthday which, technically isn’t until the end of next week, but who’s counting? I’m taking all of next week as vacation.
And, since Mother doesn’t leave until Thursday, we may spend all day next Wednesday carousing, so I can’t say if there will be a Letter next week or not. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Love, as always,
Pete
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