Thin Blood

I gave blood last Thursday – a practice I’ve been doing about every two months since last year. Generally, I have no problems. Though I’m a vegetarian, I eat leafy greens and broccoli on a regular basis and take vitamins a few times a week to round out the rough spots in my diet.

This time, everything seemed go normally as well. I ran into Sara, who got turned away for having low iron, and sat quietly while my blood drained into the bag while the girl next to me complained of nausau and light-headedness. There were no problems with me, luckily. I filled my pint quickly while the nurses ran back and forth taking care of the sick girl, then settled down for a granola bar and a bottle of water afterwards. If it had been Friday, I would have felt fine to have a couple of beers at TGs and smoke with my friends.

The next day, I still felt fine. In the morning I went to Mechanics, where we complained to John about the amount of homework. The two scattering problems from the night before were just far too much to finish in a couple of days! He conceded that we could veto a problem or two every week, we did a couple of problems on the board, and I scooted off to my office hours down in the library. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to help Lori. This is when I first noticed the dizzyness. It was either the caffeine or my low blood sugar, I assumed. Certainly, I had eaten breakfast in the morning, but my body was trying to makeup for a lot of lost fluid and iron.

I excused myself, grabbed some nutella, drank some water, and settled down to finish helping people with lab questions, though I still felt a bit out of it.

Afterwards, I felt even more tired than before, so I started freaking out a little. Deciding to remedy the problem, I grabbed a smoothie at “Da Spot”‘s truck, picked up some spinach, and grabbed a mini-pizza from Pizza Hut to fill me up. The combo made me feel a bit better, but I decided to skip drinking and TGs for the evening.

I came home to rest, feeling a bit of a tightness in my chest, and tried to recover with a vitamin, some food, and lots of rest. In the evening, I rested, played “Cards Against Humanity” with Elan, Jake, Jasper, Lisa, Davey, and Josh, smoked and generally tried to relax. By Sunday, I still didn’t feel well, so I called the blood bank. “Oh no, you should get to the ER!” they said. Great. So much for studying for qual and getting homework done.

Bryan drove me to Queens hospital and before I knew it I had electrodes hooked to my chest, blood drawn from my finger, and an x-ray happening. Half of my day went by and after all the tests, the waiting, the sitting in a gown on a table, they told me I’m mostly fine, should drink more fluids and eat well for a week. Wow. This always seems to happen when I go to the doctor.

So yeah, I bought some iron supplements and have been drinking lots of fluids. I’m feeling a bit better today, but still not 100%. Now, if I could only get caught up on all my work, things would be great…