39 Gallons: Paying Bills in Blood

It’s 8:45 at night on a Tuesday, and Christie is about to stick me with the needle. I’m laying in a bed at the Biomat plasma donation center, waiting to trade 875 milliliters of the watery part of my blood for $50.

I like Christie. She always asks how my day has been. She remembers the book I was reading last week, and I can tell that she’s smiling behind her mask. These are all secondary reasons. The important thing about Christie is that she doesn’t have trouble finding the vein in my right arm.

We have to use the right arm because the vein in my left arm got blown out during a bad donation a year ago. The woman who pushed the needle in turned her head to look at a coworker at the exact moment it stuck me, and in her carelessness, everything went wrong. I ended up with a bruise the size of a football. We don’t use the left arm anymore.

Christie pulls the skin tight so she can see my vein clearly, then slides the needle into place. Once the blood flashes into the tubing, she tapes it all down and tells the machine to start working. She makes a notation on some paperwork before telling me that she’ll be back in a bit to check on me. Over the next 45 minutes, I’ll go through several cycles of having my blood pumped into the machine, spun in a centrifuge to separate the plasma, and then pumped back into me.

It’s actually a fairly boring affair. Pump your fist when the machine is pulling; relax when it’s returning your blood. Most people play on their phones. I try to remember to…