I’m pretty desperate to make some extra money, but also pretty lazy, so obviously I started going to donate plasma. It's not really a donation. I am selling my plasma because they give me money for it. And like all capitalistic transactions, the buyers have to make sure they are getting a good product. I went to the plasma place as a first time donor around 2:30 and I did not leave the plasma place until close to 5. This is because they had to make sure I was healthy and fulfilled all the requirements. And also that I am a real person. I had to bring my social security card. Had to take that thing out and about. You are not supposed to do that unless, I guess, you are selling a literal piece of your body. Sorry, donating. So I gave the guy my documents and then I sat for a good long while waiting to be called. Then I was called, after 30 minutes. They do not have enough people working at that place. I thought maybe I could get a job there but I don’t know how to stick needles into people without causing damage. Spoiler alert, neither do the people that work there. Or, and this is the more likely scenario, I should not be giving plasma. That was foreshadowing. I sit down at the little desk thing and the guy, the same one who took all my documents and checked me in, says hi how are you, as if we are meeting for the first time. He literally let me leave the building and walk right back in without checking me in again so I was sure he recognized me. I don’t know. Maybe all of us dairy cows, I mean plasma humans, start to look the same after a while. I think donating plasma is good, it just puts a weird image in my head. An image of dairy cows. If you have never been in a biolife building, you will find out why later. You could also find out if you just stop reading and go to a biolife building but please don’t stop reading pleasepleaseplease. I had to show him my documents again. I understand the need to be thorough and am grateful for their carefulness now but after having to wait for 30 minutes and doing things twice and yada yada I was getting inpatient. But I forked over the papers and then he had to check my arms for bruises. That part made me nervous because as a girl and a klutz I am often covered in bruises I cannot explain. Luckily there were none on my arms and we proceeded. He weighed me, told me I was good, and then told me to get back on the scale because there was a problem. I am sure there was not a problem. He just was not expecting such a high number. Of this I am sure and I don’t know how to feel about it. He took my temperature and my blood pressure and then he had to poke my finger. It was not so bad. He said as such and I agreed. It didn’t hurt. What hurt was the part where he started to squeeze my blood up and out of my finger. I thought it was going to pop. Like a balloon. He was wearing a plastic visor over his face and I couldn’t help but wonder if the people at the prescreen stations were wearing visors because a finger had in fact popped in the past. Despite my worries, my finger did not pop. Everything was fine. He took my blood and told me my iron and protein levels were good. I was also worried about this because I am anemic and have had syncopal episodes as a result in the past. When I told him this, because I was legally required to, he asked me “why are you here” with his eyes and out loud said “tell your nurse”. I was not sure what he meant because I knew the people doing the poking were not nurses. He meant the nurse doing my physical exam. I took a questionnaire about my health history and then I had to go into an exam room with a nurse and answer half of the questions a second time with them. Very strict about the product quality. I know it's for the health of the donor and the patients receiving the plasma but when I received my biolife debit card it just really felt like a transaction. Before I received my debit card, however, the nurse asked me a question that had not been on the questionnaire. “Have you eaten lunch today?” I told her I had eaten a burrito bowl around 11. We listen and we don't judge many people eat burrito bowls around 11am. By that point it was around 3:30pm so she said that I needed to eat something and gave me a chocolate protein shake and a bag of goldfish. Wow, very cool, very nice. Then I thought of fattening up a pig to bring it to the slaughter house and decided to stop thinking for a while. While I ate my snack she explained my debit card to me and then took me outside to do some more waiting while she went over my information. I passed my physical and finished my snack, so it was finally time to go over to the phlebotomy floor. What a strange word, phlebotomy. The phlebotomy floor is sectioned into little areas, each with a color assigned to it, and in each section there are machines lining the little half walls that separate the colors from each other. There are chairs between the machines and the phlebotomists walk in between the machines, hooking people up to them, unhooking people, clearing the plasma from the machines. So weird. It really reminded me of cows standing in stalls waiting to be milked. Except that milk is meant to come out of the body and the cows feel nice after they get milked. I knew I would not feel nice after getting the plasma taken out of me. A couple of years back I signed up to be a possible bone marrow donor through a website made for people of similar heritage. I put in my information and waited to see if I would get matched and I actually did. Part of the process was getting blood work done to see if I actually was 100% a good match for the donee, so I went to a place near my house. The company set everything up and all I had to do was show up and tell the front desk people my name. Once I was in the chair the phlebotomist started taking out the vials I would need to fill. “See” she said “not too much, not even a pint”. This did do something to calm my nerves because I had passed out giving blood before, and that was a pint. So I gave her my arm and she got started, switching out the vials once they got full. I think I had filled four before I started to see black spots. As you can probably tell, I have a bad history with donating my fluids. Ew that sounded weird. I sat down anyway and let the guy stick me with the needle. I’m pretty sure I have small veins because they say it's not supposed to hurt, but the needle always feels like it's stretching my arm. It feels so weird. I do not look when they put the needle in or take the needle out. I don’t need to be seeing that. Things going into or out of a part of my body things aren't supposed to go in or out of is not something I need to witness. Hmm, that also sounds weird. But I sat there and stuck it out like a champ. The nice thing about plasma donation is that they filter the plasma out of your blood and give you back the red cells. Dairy cows cannot say they get any part of their milk back... Not that they would want any of it back. The milk is supposed to leave one way or another. I think getting the red blood cells back is the only reason I didn’t pass out. I will say towards the end there I started seeing the little floaty things in the air that tell me I may not be conscious in a little bit. That’s when they hit you with the saline, though. Suddenly, I was wide awake, freezing cold, and my arm was very uncomfortable. That's probably another reason I was able to drive myself home afterwards. When the phlebotomist was unhooking me, he asked if I needed to go to the bathroom, because that’s one of the symptoms of getting saline. You feel like you need to pee. I did not need to pee, which made me feel like maybe there’s something wrong there because a properly hydrated person would need to pee. Another reason plasma donation may not be for me but hey, I need the money, and someone out there needs my plasma. Transaction complete, I sat in the waiting room for the last time to make sure I was ok, which I was thankfully, and went home 75 dollars richer. There is no moral to this story. I just wanted to write about how plasma donation makes me feel like a dairy cow and the process is very long and tedious and sometimes I am unintentionally offended by it.