Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Sometime in early February I had an arm sample taken. This is once every four months they do this, and I was up. Thought nothing of it. When you go back and get a bed and stick you, they fill a vial with maybe an ounce of blood and send it to a lab for more rigorous testing than the normal screening. Making sure I don't have HIV and whatnot. That's fine.

When I went in for donation on February 24th I was told there was a problem with my arm sample from before. My protein was too low. So they took another arm sample and said they'd call me in seven to ten days to tell me it was okay to donate again.

I was unable to donate for that time. They never called. After two weeks I called them and learned I was good to go; I could go ahead and make appointments again online, I was told. Well that turned out not to be true, so I had to call back and straighten them out, and they said it was all straightened out, which was still not true. But they made appointments for me over the phone for this week, and today was my first time in a month.

It was weird. I was kind of nervous about going back, which makes no sense at all. But I screened okay and donated okay and everything is normal again. And before I left I used the computer there to try to make an appointment for two weeks from today, and it worked. Don't know yet if I'll be able to make appointments from home, haven't tried, afraid to.

Next week, unfortunately, I have to miss donating again because I all the times are full when I could go. Last week, when I would have made the appointments for next week (the schedule only goes two weeks out), I the web site wasn't letting me.

So five weeks of missed plasma donating, $325 in opportunity cost. It hurts.

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