I don't give blood anymore

In what seemed to be a good idea at the time, I donated blood a couple of months back.

Part of the fun in donating blood is the questionnaire you have to fill out before they'll let you do it. Not only do they want to know if you have any diseases or spent time in some really happening areas of south-central Africa (I think I once saw E! do an episode of Wild On for Botswana), but they also want to know about your sexual history, including, in many instances, the sexual history of past sexual partners.

When I got to this section of the application, Havilah (my coworker who I went to donate blood with) and I couldn't stop laughing. How were either of us supposed to know if we've had a partner who had had a partner who was a man who had been with another man since 1977? We decided that the only way to be sure, going forward was to take a stack of applications "to-go." You know, keep them at hour homes so that we could always be well-informed blood donors. The center was a bit surprised when we asked for some copies to take home.

Recently my office ran another blood drive, only this time I was banned from donating. I know what you're thinking, and no, I am a very clean, very disease-free individual - my company banned me because last time I couldn't remain conscious afterwards.

Yes, that's correct -- I couldn't remain conscious. See, I'm a bit of a competitive person, and Havilah had started first, and was a good quarter-bag ahead of me when I started. So to catch up, I just double-timed how often I squeezed the handgrip. Apparently my body (which isn't very big) wasn't ready for me to lose that percentage of my blood as quickly as I was ready to give it.

The result: I passed out in the recovery area, the reception area, my office, my bosses office, and then finally in the taxi home. For a while I was concerned that they may have to give me a transfusion of the blood I had just donated, but there's no way after all I went through that I was going to let them just give it back.

When I explained the ordeal to my boss, she simply shook her head and said, "Kevin, I worry about you sometimes."