The Subtle Landscape

  Early AM last Friday pumping my bike up a steep hill central to our downtown I noticed a bright red light – “Plasma” – and a bunch of people coughing and smoking off to the left.  Oh my.  Nearly (to be honest, completely and wasted) out of breath, I didn’t realize till I crested that those folks were basically selling body parts to fund their bad habits. 

  Later in the day while donating some of my own good stuff I asked about that.  Turns out that plasma traded for cash won’t/can’t by law soon enter the system of another human.  Good to know.  It might though later, because it’s sold to pharmaceutical companies as an ingredient.  That business model is strangely analogous to the one beginning with a cocoa leaf grower and ending with a cartel kingpin.

  The process of giving blood is surprisingly nearly without pain.  Remember when you were a kid and some mustachioed nurse would prick your finger with a broken rusty razorblade?  And it felt like an electric shock?  Well, now, at the blood center you do not even notice when they draw a small sample from your finger to check iron levels.  No foolin’.

  And when it comes time for what my kids call a blood shot, the comparison continues to be valid.  Metallurgical advancements have made today’s needles thinner and sharper.  Probably helps that they’re not sterilized and reused.  Just watch the large screen TV and you’ll hardly flinch. 

  The most unpleasant part of the deal?  I’ve noticed that vigorous exercise undertaken the day after a donation usually feels, well, crappy.  I asked my MD brother about this.  “Hey man, is giving blood sort of the opposite of blood doping?  When one gives back to himself a unit of highly oxygenated blood?”

  “Ya, genius, that’s why they tell you not to do anything strenuous”.

This entry was posted on August 19, 2011 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.