I donated blood at work today. I enjoy donating blood. For purely selfish reasons. It’s the best way I can think of to minimize the life-expectancy gap between the sexes. You know, because of the whole menstruation advantage. Anyway…

They quizzed me, sterilized me, punctured me, and sucked me. Sounds a lot more romantic than it really was. Then I was supposed to apply direct pressure to stop the bleeding. I saw other people do this while I was being sucked dry and it usually took about two or three minutes for the wound to heal and the bleeding to stop. After a few minutes of me holding the gauze on my arm, the doctor came over and removed my hand and then jumped back in surprise when he was met by an aggressive fountain of blood. He quickly covered me back up and told me to hold on for a little longer. Five minutes later the nurse came over to check on me and was met by a similar fate. (‘coagular‘ means ‘to coagulate‘ in Spanish!) Maybe I should raise my arm above my head while I apply pressure. OK. For about eight minutes. Finally the nurse came back over and removed the gauze. The bleeding had stopped. She prodded around for a second and, to nobody’s surprise, Old Faithful erupted once again. “Why did you have to go and poke me?”, I said. “It’s your fault now.” Arm up. Direct pressure – but not so much this time. The nurse went out for a coffee. Ten more minutes. That seemed to do the trick.

Yes, it took me more than 20 minutes to stop bleeding. But I was rewarded with all of the apple juice, cupcakes, Smarties, and sesame seed bars I could eat.