Have I told you that I have a Red Cross donor card they sent me a couple months back? I figure they finally value my frequent-flyerness donating. Yeah, baby!

While on the way to the library today, I spotted a Red Cross bus parking itself in front of the Chemistry Building. And right there, I decided to give 'em, ehm, the gift of life. Partly Mostly, because I was eager to see how easy the whole pre-donation procedures would be now that I have the priviledge of a card holder.

I stepped up to the stool and up to the bus and waited for a couple minutes on the light flamingo pink bench. I think there was Cher singing on the background. I then proudly passed my pretty red card to the attending nurse. Seriously, that moment was up to par with the day I turned legal and bought my first alcoholic drink at, uhm...Walmart. She then scanned it and there it was, my personal information popping up from the databank. But, yeah, that was pretty much it. I still have to answer the 50-something questions, verbally, while she's clicking the YES/NO options.

And then there were the usual pulse and temperature checking and the finger-pricking: pulse, well within the range, check; temperature, normal, check. For a while, it looked that we were all on the way to enter blood-donating highway. But then, it was all going down on the last screening test. It turned out that my blood drop wasn't sinking on the copper sulfate solution, which means, qualitatively, I might have a low hemoglobin concentration.

The nurse then took a couple more drops on a pippette, went outside, performed some sort of Hematocrit test on them, and came back a couple minutes latter with a deferral letter officially confirming that my Hb-level was two percents lower than their allowable range for donation.

So today, I was pronounced an anemic.

"It could be a sign of iron-deficiency," she said.

Funny, I thought I've eaten well-and-balanced meals. Well, yeah, a little low on the vegetable side, but otherwise high in protein (and by protein I mean, red meat, chicken, and fish), carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamin C.

So you now, between now and Thursday afternoon (the last day to donate with them), I'd have to increase my iron intake, foodwise or some other way. I think I still have that Centrum A-to-Zinc somewhere, or can I just drink some rusty water? Nah...j/k.