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Blood
By Stephanie Kemp








I try to give blood every 60 days. That is how often you (if you are over 17 and weigh at least 110 pounds) are allowed to donate.*

(I am. And I do.)

So I do.

I started donating through the Red Cross when I chaired my high school blood drive and promptly fainted over the cookie table after giving blood for the first time, while trying to encourage two juniors to donate, proving that it was “no big deal and totally not scary.”

Needless to say, I was an effective leader.

Now I primarily give blood at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Always a weekday. Always at 11am.  Always knowing that I won’t faint…Probably.

It is part of my life here, and I can’t imagine ever not doing it, for as long as I have blood to give and for as long as they want it or need it. (I am 0+, in case you were wondering or need blood and are type AB+, A+, B+ or 0+.)

Grown up humans have between eight to twelve pints of blood in their bodies.
When you donate, you give one.
A newborn baby has about one cup of blood in their bodies.

I have always given blood sporadically (when I am feeling good or bad, lucky or unlucky, after the Northridge Earthquake, after 9/11, after school shootings and/or mass shootings and/or any shootings), but I started giving regularly when a little girl from my daughters’ elementary school found out one normal sunny day that “it was leukemia, not the flu.”

I knew her mom as moms at a shared school do:  

Smiles at the Monday morning assemblies…
Overlap of some excellent mutual friends…
Gratitude that this mom volunteered to teach an after school knitting class that my kids thought they wanted to try (even though - or, maybe, because -  they inherited my knitting skills)…
Never correcting her when she called me Jennifer because I liked the way it sounded and because she always looked me in the eye and smiled as she said it.

I donated platelets to this mom’s daughter after I found out (that she found out) one normal sunny day that her tiny, healthy, badass daughter had leukemia, not the flu.

There was no turning back after that, especially when another friend’s daughter started getting blood clots out of the blue and was in and out of (but mostly in) Children’s for the better part of a year, having multiple surgeries on her foot, just before the pandemic hit and after having spent all of her 13 years on Earth being a beautiful dancer.

I don’t remember if this daughter needed my blood (or platelets), but I do remember that she (and her mom) needed banana bread in the PICU during those first terrifying days of not knowing what was happening.

Thankfully, both girls (and their moms) are now thriving, but I keep driving into East Hollywood every two months to donate blood, now writing “N/A” as my answer to, “Are you donating for someone specific today?”

This is not me trying to be a humble-bragging douchey do-gooder, there is just something that happens to me when I give blood every 60 days….

I know I need to sleep properly, eat well (lots of black beans and leafy greens and Cream of Wheat - with a little red meat as a pre-blood donation bonus), drink a lot of water, cut back on the wine……

I know I need to arrive on time, answer a trillion questions honestly, “to the best of my knowledge,” and know how grateful I will feel as I answer them…

I know it will be hard to park in the overcrowded underground parking structure but that I will never start swearing out the window if someone is taking too long to turn into a space or has left their car blocking the lane in a rush to race into the building.

I will never be impatient with the valet.
I will always be kind in the elevator, and hold the door open, for as long as it takes.
I will always wish I could give more than blood.

After I sign in and answer the thousands of questions, I will secretly hope that I get my friend, K, as my phlebotomist. She knows about my 2 kids, I know about her 4. She knows my whole face, I only know half of hers. I remember to uncross my legs for blood pressure (yesterday was 117/76) and she reminds me to warm up my thumbs for my iron check. (Who knew?) Yesterday was a personal all time hemoglobin high with a 13.4 (12.5 is the minimum requirement for being able to donate).

I like that I know these things.
I like what I envision to be the lower half of K’s face under her mask and smiling eyes.
I like that she knows that I’ll never let her weigh me.

Once I am hooked up, we (there are usually 2 or 3 of us at a time - all good people obviously - as we are donating blood) look up at the butterflied ceiling and/or watch KTLA5 News.  I always hope to see Chris Schauble at the anchor desk, but am disappointed when I remember that he is now on the pre-dawn shift. I have loved him ever since I saw him panic on-camera one morning when there was an earthquake that made him jump for cover under his news desk. I wonder if this panic (or the time he dropped an F-bomb, also on-camera) might be responsible for his current time slot. Mostly I remember (from seeing clips of him running marathons for a good cause or singing with his daughters) that he seems like a good dad and person.

Sometimes, during the commercial breaks (or if there is a segment about the Kardashians), I just look at the butterflies and squeeze my little blue ball to make the blood go faster.  

After 8-9 minutes (my blood is fast with our without the Kardashians), I am unhooked and always choose a purple gauze wrap for my arm. After my blood is labeled and wheeled away, K gives me a drink and extra snacks, which I pretend I will give to my girls, even though I will probably eat them in the car, especially if they are pop chips.

I sip my drink and wait 10 minutes until a timer goes off, so I don’t leave wobbly.
My parking ticket is always validated without me ever even having to ask.
I leave Grateful. Hopeful. Helpful.

I usually go straight home,
I never feel guilty about a nap.

Every 60 days I make a single (or double -  they can split the pint and “each blood or platelet donation can help save up to two little lives in our community.”) difference in a world that too often tries to drain the hope and hold the dire.

And this one day out of 60 makes me feel better about the other 59. (Plus I haven’t fainted since that day in high school, except for that time in the middle of my friend’s wedding when I was a bridesmaid and that other time I overheated playing tennis because I don’t ever sweat above the knees.)

Let me know if you want to go with me next time.

Or if you need me to share my prizes:

Tickets to the LA County Fair
Pop chips (although as you - and my daughters - now know, I might not share these)
Gatorade and/or peanut butter crackers
Movie tickets
Starbucks or Target gift cards
Knotsberry Farm coupons
Kings hockey pucks or promotional backpacks (and one time, Dodgers tickets)
T shirts and sweat shirts and baseball hats and water bottles.

Raffles for things like Amazon gift cards or Uber vouchers or other things I have forgotten, possibly because I gave them away, but definitely because giving blood makes me, temporarily, selfless.



*The Red Cross regulation is every 56 days. CHLA is every 60…..Just in case you were wondering and/or might want to donate with or without me.