Sunday normally consists of swim, steam, market and breakfast but today we squeezed in a blood donation after the market – or rather we tried to squeeze in a blood donation. I was feeling somewhat virtuous – “what are you doing today?” said the blonde pool attendant – “I am giving blood”, you could see her looking in awe at my new halo.
I hadn’t given blood in so long that the computer records no longer existed in a transferable medium – so I was a new blood donor and scrutinised carefully. I managed to stumble quickly over the prostitutes, dangerous hobbies and injecting drugs questions (I thought that not at the same time covered them) and slowed down too much at the “have you returned from foreign parts with a fever?” – wow they make these forms so difficult to lie on almost as bad as the US immigration one “have you ever committed genocide?”.
Mentioning ‘typhoid’ in passing to the nurse was a bad idea – the nurse visibly moved her chair back as I quickly recovered with “but all the tests were clean – looked like some sort of fever from Lithuania”. Too late – she had already donned her biosuit and was prodding me with a long stick with a disclosure signature they could now double check my medical records and see if they could ban me for life. She quickly pointed out the exit, otherwise known as the walk of shame – as you walk away from the interview the long line of pious blood donors were all thinking – is he banned for prostitution or intravenous drug use?
Still I sat in the cafe munching my way through the chocolate biscuits, whilst my keep fit instructor came in, smiled and then collapsed to the floor and was quickly hidden behind a screen with nurses saying reassuring things such as – “if you feel pins and needles in your feet kick the box away”, and “you are looking a much better colour now” – as a fan was starting to put her into fast freeze and brought an icy pallor to her.
I was waiting for Kim for ages, judging by the empty biscuit plate, pondering the fact that they didn’t have a lycanthropy question (although werewolfism may be transferred through saliva) or a vampirism query (HIV might be that though) and wondering how much blood they had taken from her – she appeared looking like a voodoo doll. It appeared they had in fact not taken any blood from her – although not for the want of trying. Kim ‘the stone’ has veins which don’t give up blood easily – they could have guessed when her birthplace is marked as Yorkshire. Three nurses and four attempts later they gave up and she toddled down the walk of shame with sore arms.
So it was now up to Stuart to redeem the Forsyth blood giving record, which he did although having to be fanned down by one nurse and having his feet raised by another as he feined fainting – some people have all the luck.
