Day 150 and donating blood

I picked up my new glasses today.

I learned my lesson - I didn't ask for a copy of my prescription until after I'd ordered and paid for a pair from my optometrist. So they didn't try to talk me out of Clearly Contacts, just printed it off.

I donated platelets today, for a man in a Calgary hospital who recently had a bone marrow transplant. The needle wasn't sitting quite right and kept setting off warning alarms. The nurse didn't want to fiddle with the needle too much, and I didn't want her to - usually, fiddling means the needle goes right through the vein and the donation has to end. So, since it didn't hurt, we just put up with it. The new machines have cut down the donation time drastically, and it was to save a life.

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Pictures catch up post!

They don't often nap together, but when they do, it's ADORABLE.

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On dumpster divers

I like Jess onThe New Girl. I like that she's brave enough to be so quirky. I like that she always wants to believe the best of everyone she meets.

I thought of her while bagging up my recyclables tonight. I haven't been to the bottle depot in years - it's just not worth driving to one and then standing in line, clutching my one garbage bag, behind five different people with at least five bags of bottles and cans.

So I leave my bags by the dumpster in my parking lot. They disappear quickly. Often, if I see a dumpster diver and they don't give me the heebie-jeebies, I'll give them bottles from my car, or grab a half-full bag from my apartment and bring it out to them.

Only once have I seen dumpster divers that have given me the heebie-jeebies. One guy was in the dumpster, ripping apart bags with a creepy zeal, while his cronies were apparently standing guard. They got no bottles from me. But everyone else has. Like Jess, I tell myself that they're good people and they need the bottles for good reasons. And if they want to go stand in line at the bottle depot, all power to them.

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I am a blood donor

I was scheduled to give platelets this Saturday. Yesterday morning, Canadian Blood Services called and asked me to come in tonight, as I was a match. I figured this was a special request, and I agreed to do it, although I said I might be late. I prefer to donate on Saturdays so that I don't have to deal with downtown traffic. I got there half an hour early, actually, by avoiding the Deerfoot. I had cookies until a chair was ready for me. One of the nurses was the one who helped track me down as a match - they were having a hard time finding someone for this particular patient. When someone needs a match, it means that their health is often so precarious that they want to match as many antigens as possible, or reduce the risk of antibodies and clotting. As someone with AB+ blood, I don't have any antibodies to pass on, blood type wise (in platelets, I don't donate any red blood cells). This patient is a woman who is in the Foothills Hospital, with aplastic anemia, and she was born in 1981. As always, I mentally cast some blessings on my platelets and told them to go out and do good things. My own platelet count was unusually high - another nurse thinks it was turkey from Thanksgiving this weekend. Whatever the cause, I was only hooked up to the machine for 55 minutes - a new personal record. Once I got the call yesterday, I began to drink extra glasses of water to juice up my vein. My vein was in a terrific mood today.

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