A Brush With Death

Right now I feel like I’m going to die.  I am so hungry.  This morning I got up and looked at The Boyfriend’s paper for him which was fine because he’s an exceptional academic writer, but I still told him he had to take me out to eat later because I was doing him such an awesome favor seeing as I am a professional writing tutor and all and normally this kind of thing would be worth at least $15.00 then I had a piece and a half of toast and a glass of milk before I felt all nauseous then I drove The Boyfriend to class and when I was driving back I was like, “I don’t have my phone.  Man, it would suck if The Boyfriend didn’t have class today and tried to run after the car as I was driving away, but his radio station was up too loud for me to hear, especially since it’s raining.”  Then I got home and immediately found my phone: One Missed Call From: The Boyfriend.  One New Text Message: “Come back.  Class was cancelled.”

He didn’t run after the car or anything.  Lame.

Anyway, then he took a nap, which was supposed to be a nap, but his naps never are naps because he tricks me about naps.  One time at like 6:00pm he was like, “Let’s take a nap” and I was like, “Okay!” even though I wasn’t really sleepy because I partially thought “nap” was code for “sexy time” and even if it really were a nap it would only last an hour.  Once midnight rolled around and I hadn’t fallen asleep and was staring at the ceiling, still not tired and sans sexy time to boot I was like, “This is not a nap at all!  This is sleeping!  I have been bamboozled!”  Anyway, The Boyfriend’s nap started at 1:30 and it’s after 5:00 now and we planned to go eat right after his class which ends at 3:18 but usually gets out sooner.

I am like a ravenous wolverine at this point and the kittens are starting to look delicious.

I could just eat, but I really want a turkey sub from Potbelly.

But this isn’t the brush with death I wanted to tell you about.  Back in the day, I used to “donate” plasma for money.  Really I shouldn’t say “used to” like it was a super regular thing because I only did it twice before my heroic act of charity was thwarted.

First, though, let me tell you about giving plasma.  It’s sweet.  Unless your nurse hates her life and has decided to blame you for the fact that her children are monsters and her boss won’t quit making sexual advances towards her so she stabs you repeatedly and without apology, then the whole experience is just like waiting around then getting paid, all for a good cause.  The plasma you donate goes to like kids with cancer or something.  I don’t know--sick people.

Anyway, after this really intense process of questions about having unprotected sex with men who may have had unprotected sex with other men before 1970 and trading sex for drugs or money and lots of other questions you wouldn’t admit to even if they were true, you get hooked up to this machine that pumps your blood out into a bag next to you.  Then that machine reverses itself and PUMPS YOUR BLOOD BACK INTO YOU.  It’s horrifying.  And awesome.  The machine keeps your plasma, a piss-on-a-day-you-drank-an-okay-amount-of-fluids color liquid, in a separate bag after straining it out of your blood.  You get back your plasmaless blood because your body is sweet and can just make new plasma unlike those sick kids which is just sad, so I’m not going to even try to make a joke here.

The end is the only terrible part because once you’ve filled up the plasma bag then they pump saline into your veins to hydrate you so you can go out into the world and keep being awesome.  They tell you, “This part will probably make you a little cold.”  They grossly underestimate your threshold for cold.  I shiver so intensely during this process I think the needle is going to come flying out of my arm and I’m going to coat the entire room in sanguineness and the melted iceberg that sunk the titanic.

But I endured this, TWICE, and wanted to endure more for the mon--for the children.  Except I got a certified letter in the mail from the place one day which told me there was a problem with my blood test which may affect my future as a donor.  I suppose most people would hear, “You have the flu and shouldn’t be donating right now,” but I heard, “YOU HAVE AIDS AND ARE GOING TO DIE A SLOW, PAINFUL, LONELY DEATH!!!”

I called.  You shouldn’t even bother calling.  They “don’t discuss this type of thing over the phone.”  Great, now I have AIDS and should be utterly ashamed about it.  This was on a Saturday night that I got the letter.  The place was closed on Sunday, so I had to wait until Monday to go.  My friends and mother tried to comfort me.  Molly even told me, “AIDS isn’t a death sentence anymore” which was so deadpan that I hated her for suggesting and thus reassuring my fear that I, in fact, had AIDS.  My mother insisted that it couldn’t be AIDS or anything communicable, of course, because she thinks I’m a saint.  Instead she kind of shrugged and said, “Maybe it’s just cancer?”  I think after that I forewent people all together and just watched Rent to prepare for the rest of my life except that when I realized my life would be devoid of singing and dancing numbers I fell into an even deeper depression.

When Monday came I set off for the plasma center as early as possible.  The thing about the plasma center was that it was an hour and a half away from where I lived and I had to traverse the frightening backcountry of rural Ohio to get to it.  I don’t care how politically incorrect this is, but since The Hills Have Eyes, I’ve been afraid of hillbillies.  People in the city will kill you, but people in the country will KEEP you.  I am not locationally bigoted on this subject: if you live any version of off-the-grid and it is very likely that you call you mom “sis” then you terrify me.  Also, you won’t be reading my blog because you have no internets and/or you can’t read, so I’m unconcerned about saying this.

So driving through a place that is mostly forested and dotted with dilapidated trailers and the occasional gas station/diner/place-where-some-creepy-guy-tells-you-to-take-a-shortcut-that-you-sure-as-fuck-shouldn’t-take-but-are-going-to-anyway-and-get-yourself-ambushed-by-inbred-monster-cannibals-who-worship-an-unexploded-warhead scares the bejeezus out of me.  I also have a bad sense of direction, especially when I am by myself, so I of course got lost.  I kept driving up on ghost towns that all looked alike and had one street labeled by random numbers or a term like “Coonpath.”  I drove through the hills crying because I didn’t want to die from my possible AIDS, but it would be preferable to being kept by hill-people.  Then I cried because being kept by hill-people was the superior option in the only two I though my life had at that moment.  Then I felt a little bit better at the thought that I would give the hill-people my AIDS which they would totally deserve after repeatedly raping and then eating me.  Then I cried again because I didn’t want to have AIDS to give them.

Finally, I made it to the plasma place.  I was too dehydrated to cry anymore.  I went in, told them who I was, and they told me they’d get a doctor to talk to me so I sat out in the waiting room.  A plasma center waiting room is never a pleasant place to be.  Honestly, most people who go there need money.  And some of them need it for bad things--or at least they look like they need it for bad things.  Maybe even to buy the rope and chains to tie up the unsuspecting lost people who take that shortcut from Frank at the gas station.  So I sat there, waiting.  It felt like forever.  I was alone and I was going to find out for sure that I was dying and I was going to still be alone then I’d have to drive two plus hours, depending on my capabilities to not get lost, home and be alone there some more.  I magically rehydrated and started to cry again.  This was a quiet, restrained cry where it only comes out the corner of your eyes like when you watch a really happy movie in the theaters but you’re with your friends and they think it’s sappy so you can’t tears-of-joy-and-sentimentality cry in front of them, but you know when the lights come up your eyes are going to be rimmed red and they’ll be like, “Jesus, Ashley, why are you crying?”  And you have to be like, “But they get to be together and it’s so sweet.  She seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees Jake Sully!  Shut up!”

But then the doctor called my name and I went in this little private room with her and she asked me to shut the door behind me and I almost died right there.  Then she told me why I was there and I was like, “Yeah, I fucking know why, bitch; I’ve known for three goddamned days now and you just need to spit it the fuck out!” but that was only in my head because all I was capable of saying was, “Mmhughasdknsriead…”

Then she eyed my chart and said, “You tested positive for syphilis.”

The following was what went through my mind in rapid succession:

WTF.


Stunned silence.


Syphilis is not AIDS!!!!!  YAY!!!!!!!


Wait, what is syphilis?


Don’t pirates get that?


I’m pretty sure Benjamin Franklin had that and he was a whore.


I’m not a whore…wait, who cares if I’m a whore, is this going to kill me?


I’M DYING AGAIN!!!!!  NO!!!!!!!

Then she keeps looking at her little chart and says, “We did a second test though that came up negative.”

“Huh?”

“Your first test was positive, but the second, more invasive test was negative.”

“So…I don’t have syphilis?”

“No.  It’s actually pretty common to get a false positive for syphilis, especially for women.  The test isn’t perfect.  But this still means you won’t be able to donate with us anymore--”

From that point on I didn’t hear a thing she said.  I was just happy to be alive.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realized how pissed off I was since I am ungrateful and can’t just be happy that I don’t have AIDS or syphilis.  I was negative for everything.  SHE COULD HAVE LEAD WITH THAT.  Would it have been that much harder for her to sit me down and say, “Don’t worry--you’re perfectly healthy.  BUT…” and then explain to me that even false positives get you kicked out of the program?  This leads me to believe that she gets joy out of scaring people and hates her life and her kids are monsters and her boss sexually harasses her, but I don’t even feel bad for her because whatthefuckever: she made me feel like I was dying!!!

So, that’s when I almost died.  Right now it’s 6:41 and I’ve been reduced to eating raw carrots in lieu of fattening carbs because The Boyfriend is still “napping.”  I am going to chew really fucking loud and I hope he hears it.

P.S. This whole sexually transmitted diseases thing happened before The Boyfriend.  I don’t know why that matters, but I imagine it might.  Also, just to be clear, I DON’T HAVE ANY STDS OR OTHER COMMUNICABLE DISEASES.