It was a Tuesday afternoon when I realized my kids had early release from school the next day. Being a single mom and a public school teacher means childcare is always a struggle. Forget fun stuff–I use up my babysitter budget on things like getting my will prepared, or pap smears.
So I was stuck. Should I do the drop-in daycare thing? The boys…don’t love it, and of course, it costs money. I’d be paying a babysitter so I could teach. Should I take them to work with me? No, they’d be too distracting. Should I ask a family member or friend that works from home to stick them in front of their TV? It’s not that easy, and I didn’t want to bother anybody.
And then I remembered, I could just take the day off. It’s always the last thing that occurs to me. I have tons of banked PTO, and if I took the day, I could use the morning to cross a bunch of shit off my to-do list, the shit that’s hard to do with two little kids in tow. I could go to the post office to return the faucet aerators that I ordered that turned out to be the wrong size! (In related news, being an adult is a huge rip-off.)
Anyway, I put in for a sub and planned for my Day of Victory. As is true for many teachers, I have a second job–writing for Patreon and Slate magazine–and a third job–dogsitting. My current client, a sweet mutt named Jessie, had been eagerly investigating my compost pile, and that night, she woke me up at 2:00am with liquid poops. I let her out, wiped up the gross trail she left on my carpet, and collapsed back on my bed. Right when I was drifting off, maybe 15 minutes later, I heard the tippy-tap of her claws on the side porch and got up to let her in. At that point, there was no going back to sleep. I listened to a podcast for hours, and just when I started to get sleepy again and was rejoicing in the fact that I didn’t have to get up to go to work, I remembered another doggy-client was being dropped off at 6:15.
The commotion of his arrival woke up my kids, and so that was it. I’d had maybe four hours of sleep. OK, well, my kids are 7; I’m no rookie–I’d caffeinate and power through. So that’s what I did. I got the boys ready for school, dropped them off, went home, and started absolutely decimating my list. I made my bed, I flossed my teeth–I like to write very small stuff on my to-do list because it keeps my momentum up. I did laundry. I cleaned stale French fries out of my car and surreptitiously recycled first grade artwork.
Then it was time to make the rounds. I mapped out my strategy: hit the post office, swing up to donate stuff to the thrift store, vacuum the Cheeto dust out of the newly tidy car, then pick up the groceries and head home, all in time to get the boys off the bus.
The post office had a ten-minute line, and I stood there without having to entertain anyone with rock-paper-scissors or hiss at anyone not to lick the mailboxes. I returned the stupid aerators. Yes. Check. To the thrift store!
But as I was leaving, I noticed a plasma donation place that had set up shop in the adjacent strip mall. Back in college, donating plasma was all the rage because you could go between classes and earn your drinking money for that night. I never actually did it. Too squeamish.
Shmrrty-shmrr years later, however, I’d been through pregnancy, where one suffers all manner of pokes and jabs and how’s-yer-mothers, and now I can get a blood draw with minimal drama. I still don’t crow with joy when I have to get labs drawn or watch enthralled as the blood leaves my vein, but if I stare at the wall and do some deep breathing, I’m OK.
Standing in front of this clinic with a poster in the window that said, “Earn $825 in a month!” I thought, “Eight hundred twenty-five dollars could pay for a lot… of pap smears.”
So I detoured from my Day of Victory. I walked in and slapped my ID on the counter. They handed me a folder and sat me in a cubicle with a computer to watch the consent video.
The first part of the video was all about what they do with the plasma–make medicines, help people with hemophilia, and whatnot. Now I felt virtuous–not only was I padding my pockets, I was saving the world! So much Victory!
The next part of the video described the donation process. A needle is inserted into your arm. My stomach clenched a little bit, but I was OK. The blood is drawn out through a tube and routed through a machine that separates the plasma, and the red blood cells are sent back into your body. At that point, I noticed a burning sensation in my face. The rest of my body was cold, but my face was definitely aflame. The video went on, This process takes–and I’m thinking, what could it take, 10-15 minutes?–forty-five to ninety minutes. My head went swimmy, and my limbs felt numb. Then the talking head on the screen mentioned the volume of the draw. Up to 880 mL. My hazy brain was calculating–1,000 mL to a L, that’s half a 2L soda bottle. Uggggghhhhh. I realized at that point that I definitely needed to lie down or throw up or both, and I leaned out of the cubicle to look for a couch or a bathroom or a superhero. Nothing. I remembered the sweet cold air outside and knew what I had to do.
I grabbed my purse, glasses, and phone, stood up, and started shuffling to the front. The front door was in my line of sight. With every step I took toward it, it retreated into the distance. I told myself, Just get there, and kept trudging, but my vision was closing. My head was being flattened like in a cartoon.
And the next thing I knew, I was staring at a fuzzy ceiling, my back against the cold tile. My head hurt. I had no idea how long I was out, but long enough for six people to have scurried out to hover over me. One of them had wheeled out a computer and blood pressure machine. They were saying, “Are you all right?” but I wasn’t.
Two of them hooked my armpits and hoisted me into a chair. When I said I was gonna throw up, somebody brought a barf bag. I thought, This is the best barf bag I’d ever seen–plastic with a round frame to keep the opening from collapsing. (I was glad they were prepared. I assume this was the first time this had happened during the consent video, rather than the actual procedure.) I was pouring sweat, retching into the bag. I still felt so weak. And embarrassed.
The woman whose nametag said director told me firmly, “Stop crying.”
Which I never in my life will understand. “Oh, are my silent tears disturbing you? Let me just turn them off.”
It took a full 45 minutes until I could stand up, at which point my sister arrived. In the car, I assessed the damage. I’d busted my left knee, the fingers of my left hand (but not my phone or my glasses–phew!), and clearly my head. I would have headaches for four days.
My sister wanted to take me to urgent care, but because we live in a capitalist hellscape, I insisted that she drop me at home.
When I got there, my poor doggy client had shat in her crate and was delighted to be set free, shaking poop droplets onto my walls and floors. I got her and the crate cleaned up and finally lay down on my bed. So much for my Day of Victory.
I tell my high school students, “Write from your scars, not your wounds,” because otherwise there’s no growth, no lesson, no message. But this happened a month ago, and I’m still wounded. The headaches are gone, but my knee is still tender. So I don’t know what the takeaway is. Maybe, though, it’s that if I could clean up dog diarrhea without barfing or passing out, the universe was telling me to stick to my strengths.
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