They say all good (and easy) things must come to an end.
How exactly that goes down, though, isn’t always plane to see, my friend…
“Sir, if you would, could you please follow me to the Back Office?”
Something wasn’t quite right about the smile the nurse assistant had plastered across her face as she made her overly polite request. I had already been traumatized here at the Manhattan Plasma Center, and now I was getting that foreboding tingly feeling all over my body again. I could just smell it in the air–there was definitely something off about what I had expected to be just another one of my semi-weekly1This means twice a week–not to be confused with every other week, like many paychecks. trips to Oversided-NeedleVille.
But before all that dread took over me, there were a good several very long seconds where, at first, I kinda felt special to be ‘called back’. Like, maybe they wanted to talk to me for totally awesome and rad reasons. Perhaps I would be getting an award for ‘Easiest To Find Veins’?
Or was I about to be recognized as the ‘2001 MPC Most Faithful Client’? Surely, not that. *blushes* I mean, gee guys, I’ve only started showing up to have my Money Hole regularly tapped since last July. Certainly there are plenty of other poor chumps in this college town that have been selling their souls to y’all one to two times a week for $20 to $45 all year long, right?
Oh, oh! I know! I had reached a milestone worthy of a celebration. Would today’s donation contribution put me over The Threshold and vault me into the exclusive Fifty-Liter Club? It would normally take the average guy my size 8 months to have 50L of plasma safely extracted from his body.2This is based on the upper limit of “625 to 800ml per donation”, as found here. But then again, was I your average Joe? I mean, have you seen my beautiful, veiny, rower’s forearms? Especially my right one? The one known around MPC as “Phlebotomist’s Phantasy”? Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that I was a plasma-producing prodigy without having even realized it…
“Sooo….just taking a look over your medical screening. Is there any contextual information you would like to share with us in regards to your blood test?” the resident medical professional looked over her glasses at me slightly suspiciously.
The gradual sinking feeling that I had started to feel as I had made the pilgrimage to the Back Office was now a full-on brick in the stomach (a similar, but entirely different experience than the one I had recently told you, Dear Reader, all about). My dream of walking out of there $25 richer was quickly dissipating. I mean, what was I even thinking? It’s never good to called to the Back Office–a lesson I had learned just barely 2 weeks earlier at my other college side-hustle.
And now they’re bringing up my blood results?!? Not to brag or anything, but not only was I good little Christian boy throughout my college career, but I was also a proud virgin, and for me to have any funny business with my blood would have taken some sort of funked-up bizarro Immaculate Conception scenario where, instead of the Virgin Mary getting pregnant with the Son of God, the Virgin BJ gets a Sexually Transmitted Disease.
Hey, I was pretty religious, but I wasn’t exactly a believer in modern-day anti-miracles.
“Uh, yeah, so…my blood is clean as a whistle, as clean as a preacher’s sheets, as clean as a baby’s–“3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–I0gkn5Gzw
“Let me just stop you right there,” she interrupted me. “You’ve definitely been up to something. You see this graph charting your historical test results for the protein Amyphagdelydia-3?4I just made this name up because I don’t have the energy to figure out the proper name of the protein that did me in was. And see this dashed horizontal line? That’s the threshold line. Well, two days ago you spiked at seven times over the acceptable amount in your blood.”
“Oh, yeah, that is weird. But it’s not going to be problem, right?”
“We understand that spikes like this can be inaccurate representations for various reasons, so we only take action if it is still above this level two tests in a row,” she explained.
“Well, surely whatever it was is out of my syst–“
I stopped short as she just tapped matter-of-factly on the last data point in the graph–today’s test result.
“You’re still three times over the limit, sir.”
“Oh. I see. Well, what could have even caused this?” I asked, still blissfully unaware of my lot in life at this point.
“You’re kidney over-produces this protein in several situations. For example, from exercising too strenuously after a long period of inactivity,” she explained.
“Aha! That must be it! You see, my friend Chong convinced me to start the Spring semester off right by hitting the gym with him–and we did hit it a little too hard, I suppose. Yup, that explains it all. I should be fully recovered in just a few more days and be ready to get back in the plasma-selling game.”
I gotta say, things were starting to look up again…
“Yeah, sure it could be from working out…or it could be from shooting up black tar heroine–you do have the veins perfect for such deviant activities, after all. Anyways, we have no real way of telling the difference between the two,” she said flatly.
I chuckled nervously.
“But in my case, it’s obviously from working out and not hardcore drug use…right?”
“No, unfortunately it is not obvious. We have no choice but to follow protocol, and put you on The National Donor Deferral Registry. I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to give plasma anymore.”
“Okay, well that sucks. So this lasts…how long? Six months?”
“No, that’s forever–you’ll never again be able to donate anywhere in the U.S. as long as you live, you druggie, you.”
“Are you kidding me?!? You’re blacklisting me? You’re putting me on, dare I say, a no-supply list?”
She seemed shocked by my choice of words.
“Too soon?” I asked.
“Too soon…”
The point of the story here should be ‘no good deed goes unpunished’–I mean, I was trying to improve my health and they go and blackball a dude just for working out too hard? C’mon, Karma, you had one job…
But that’s not the point here–and neither is “if you ever find yourself failing an employer-mandated drug test, just vehemently insist that it was on account of your new gym membership.” Yes, that too is a very valid, very solid, so-called ‘point of the story.’
Alas, what I really want you, Dear Reader, to reflect upon is where were you when you first saw the footage of a plane crashing into the side of the Twin Towers? You know, the foremost collectively traumatic event of our lifetimes (save for my more mature readers who lived through the assassination of JFK).
I sure as hell know where I was that Tuesday morning in 2001. I’ll give you a hint: it involved ~800ml of bodily fluid and a $20 bill…
…
…
Did you guess “a very regrettable mid-morning trip to the local strip club”? Because if you did, you would be oh, so very wrong, you pervert. I mean, how does ones even go about losing that much bodily fluid through any method other than via venipuncture? Riddle me that!
No, I was at the Manhattan Plasma Center when I got to watch history being made for all the wrong reasons…
Speaking of “history being made for all the wrong reasons,” I’ll leave you to ponder this tweet:
Oh c’mon, you know it’s funny.
And don’t you dare tell me it’s “too soon”…
Content created on 8/9 September 2023 (Fri/Sat)
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