October 29, 2026
When I started working for Texas Instruments in 1989, I quickly learned that the company was serious about two distinctive charities. Although me and my fellow employees, great and small, were encouraged to donate to The United Way from our paychecks, we were also given the opportunity to be a bit more dedicated and give from our bodies in the way of blood donations! Throughout my Texas Instruments career the local blood suckers have managed to pump somewhere between five and ten gallons of life out of my veins, and I’ve got several coffee cups and tee shirts commemorating such a feat. In fact, I had acquired such a vast wardrobe of blood donor tee shirts that I used to finish up my line meetings at work with, “Who wants my blood donor shirt this time?” There was always someone who wanted it.
Although giving blood seemed to be the thing to do during my first few years working at Texas Instruments, as time drifted by, I became one of the proud and few blood donors. I suppose some folks just don’t like huge needles stuck in their arm, but I figured such was a small price to pay in order to save someone’s life. The last time I wandered out to the mobile blood bank in my company’s parking lot I was the only loyal employee to be found.
Although I have no issues with having a needle shoved into my arm, the local blood center now wants more than just my simple blood these days. These days they want my platelets. What does that mean? I don’t have a clue, but apparently, this benefits cancer patients. Instead of simply donating a pint of blood, this procedure requires being hooked up to a machine that sucks out my blood, removes platelets, and then pumps it back into my arm. Although this might sound a bit like the plot of a B horror movie, the most horrifying thing about all of this is the fact that all this sucking and pumping takes over two hours to complete! Just the simple act of donating a pint of blood takes about fifteen minutes. So now I’m not only donating my blood but my precious time as well. I’m just assuming that such an act will get me into Heaven considering I’ve spent the last 35 years breaking one of the Ten Commandments by working on Sundays.
I was a bit shocked when the blood center called me, considering they had sucked out a fair share of my platelets a mere three weeks ago. Generally the wait time between blood donations is around 8 weeks. For platelets donations though, I can show up for that little party every 7 days. Oh great, now they’ll be calling me every freaking week. Regardless how often I might show up, the pre donation procedures is still the same.
For all of us happy blood givers we know the standard list of questions we have to go through. Questions like, “Have you had any recent tattoos or piercings? Have you been outside the United States? Have you been bitten by a zombie in the last twenty-four hours?” And then there’s all the fun questions concerning your health. “Do you have a cold? Do you have gonorrhea? Do you have AIDS?” And this moves on to questions concerning your sex life. “Have you had sex with someone with gonorrhea?” I’ve often wanted to answer that one with, “Why would I do that?” Of course, there’s the ever-popular question concerning if I’ve ever been paid for sex? Strangely enough, I’ve always found this question to be quite flattering, relishing in the idea that those at the blood center might actually think that someone out there would want to pay for my services. However, they also ask if I’ve ever paid for sex. One day I was feeling a bit odd and answered such a question with, “Does marriage count?” The lady asking the questions was not amused.
I realize it’s all standard procedure, but I was still a bit annoyed that I had to go through all these questions again considering I had just visited the blood center three weeks earlier. I felt like saying, “No, I have not contracted gonorrhea in the last three weeks. Nor have I found anyone who is willing to pay me for sex, and the expense of paying for sex isn’t in my retirement budget. In fact, I’ve never even discussed such with my financial planner.” I’m the guy who is too cheap to pay for more than one streaming service. Of course, in this modern age all of these standard questions are now on a computer. As far as I’m concerned, the entire process has kind of lost its personality.
As soon as I walked in the door the lady at the blood center logged me on to her computer and left me alone to answer this massive list of questions. However, only seconds ticked by before I had somehow left the questioning site and basically destroyed her computer. Destroyed it to the point where she was completely clueless, and we had to log onto another PC. I’m still wondering how I pulled that one off. Apparently, I had answered one question on the list concerning antibiotics wrong which kind of ticked her off, but such made me wonder if I had accidently said that I had gonorrhea as well. Computers just screw everything up! Then she ask me when I had last donated platelets. I answered, “I don’t know? The last time I was here maybe.” What I wanted to say was, “Don’t you keep records of this stuff? You called me!” Then she mentioned my response concerning the question about having a vaccination in the last eight weeks. “When was that?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe sometime in the last eight weeks is a good guess.” She wanted a specific date which I replied, “Don’t you have a record of that from when I told your three weeks ago?” She did not. So I asked for a calendar in an attempt to throw out a calculated guess, but there was no calendar to be found in the room either. “Just give me a date,” she finally blurted out. Apparently, any day during the last eight weeks would do. The worse part about this was the idea that these are the same people that I’m trusting to stick a needle in my arm.
Before I knew it, I was laying in a chair with a platelets machine sucking blood out of me and then pushing it back in. Once again, the process seems a bit creepy, but one of the girls on hand was a former division one college cheerleader so I just assumed she knew what she was doing. Indeed, there’s nothing like talking to a former cheerleader from a major university to take my mind off the fact that my blood is being circulated like an oil change.
About two and half hours after I had screwed up the center’s computer I was finally done. While I was there a couple of doners came in for a simple blood donation. They were all done within fifteen minutes and were given black donor shirts. I thought that was pretty cool because I’ve received very few black blood doner shirts. It might have had a Halloween theme, and I was a bit excited about getting one. However, when I finally finished up, they didn’t even offer me one. They didn’t even offer me a freaking cookie! Maybe they were still pissed off that I had screwed up their computer. The last time I gave up my platelets and two hours of my life the center gave me some kind fancy, new phone charger. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts. Oh well, if I can save a life or at least help someone out by giving up two and half hours of my Saturday, I guess that’s time well spent.
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