Bloodsuckers

No, tonight's post is not about vampires (much to my mother's liking). Tonight I recall two similar creatures: mosquitoes and phlebotomists. Both bring back bad memories, both leave their mark, and both are at times unavoidable.

In my youth, I learned mosquitoes can more easily smell your blood if you have recently consumed a banana. Since then, I have discovered there is no conclusive evidence to support this hypothesis, although I avoided bananas for years, and only eat them now on rare occasions. But mosquitoes do find you by your smell. The carbon dioxide in your breath in particular attracts them. The best deterrent I found was to have an oscillating fan blow on me during warm summer evenings; the stiff breeze kept the mosquitoes from landing.


I developed a keen sense of hearing in my youth as well--I could wake up out of a dead sleep if I thought I heard the slightest buzzing by my ears. I would reflexively sit upright in bed, flinging my arm by my ear to drive off the tiny, buzzing alarm. This habit was so ingrained that I nearly took out some friends at school the one day we were playing with tuning forks in science class. They just thought I was having a spasm attack.

I hate bug bites; spiders seemed to enjoy my blood as well. The worst part about bug bites is that the moment you give in to that overwhelming desire to scratch, the harder it is to resist the urge the next time. I have had bites itch for weeks after the bite healed, because of my vigorous initial scratching. (There's something metaphorical in there, how "just once" can hurt.) Scientifically speaking, scratching an insect bite can spread the toxins that make you itch away from the original site of entry. I think slight nerve damage can also occur, causing "phantom" itching later on.

But we can't all hide indoors, living in constant fear of these annoying pests at best, or these plaguebringers at worst. Sometimes being bit or stuck with a needle are just plain unavoidable. Phlebotomists are much bigger and definitely more human than mosquitoes, but they too use needles to siphon off our lifeblood. 

When I was in the hospital during my first pregnancy, the doctors insisted on having fresh blood every three days. It is protocol in most hospitals to do this to long-term patients, so if an emergency occurred and the patient started bleeding out, they would already have a small sample on hand with which to find a match. I soon started refusing. I am a "hard stick," because my veins are small and tend to roll. (Even my veins are smart, rolling away from pain and danger!) I decided that my mental health was more important than them having easy access to my blood type in an emergency, especially since the risk of bleeding out was not very high. It was a convenience for them, but a small torture for me.

This refusal always sent the phlebotomists into a tizzy, and the Head Nurse was sent for each time I refused. The nurses would put on their best professional faces, explaining to me again why they needed to take my blood so often. I stuck to my guns, though--I would not be railroaded into submission. I needed to have some say in my care, and I thought every six days was perfectly sufficient. (It would take at least that long for the bruises from the last draw to heal.) I needed my blood!

I have only tried to donate blood once, at a college-sponsored blood drive. I was of course nervous, wary of the biting needles and conscious of the life force the volunteers would be siphoning away. After three different attempts on both of my arms, a fourth poke finally took. Every second my vein was open I was in agony. The blood was filling the bags more quickly than average, and although I was only half way done, the nurse attending me noticed my pain and wanted to pull out early. I told her to leave it be, I was almost done--would they even be able to use half a bag of blood? She ignored me, my blood was not donated, and I had a very large, ugly bruise on half my arm for weeks afterward. I didn't even get to find out my blood type at that time. Never again.

Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of blood drives is very charitable and necessary, it is just not for me or anyone else with tiny, rolling veins. I will find other ways to serve humanity, thank you very much.

There was a time when I would have donated the very marrow from my bones, though. It would have meant having a huge pipe going from my jugular to a filtering machine, then to the artery in my inner thigh for about six hours, after several days of preparatory blood work. (That's the process for marrow donation for short people like me.) Unfortunately, I was not a match for my sister. Although maybe it is good, in a way--if my marrow had failed her like the anonymous donor, I would have felt very guilty and to blame for her eventual death. Perhaps our not matching was a blessing in disguise.

At least she doesn't have to deal with mosquitoes or phlebotomists anymore.