First, find a plasma center. This shouldn’t be hard in any reasonably urban area. Check the most economically depressed neighborhoods.
At the clinic, you will be asked to show your ID, your Social Security card, and a postmarked piece of mail with your name on it and an address that is not known to the clinic to be a transient address, such as a halfway house.
Then you wait for a long time, in a hard plastic chair. In a nice clinic, there will be a television and maybe even wi-fi. It’s your turn! You fill out a few forms, and get your picture taken in front of a green wall that gives everyone a sickly pallor. Then you wait some more.
It’s your turn! The tech will ask for your first and last name, and the last four digits of your Social Security number. Then you need to put your hand under a special light to make sure you haven’t been donating at any other clinics. (Each clinic marks a particular finger with a special pen.) Then it’s time to get your vitals checked. Weight, temperature, blood pressure, and a finger prick to check your iron and protein levels.
Then you wait some more.
It’s your turn! First, last, last four digits of SSN. Pee test! What do they check for? I don’t know, but I can assure you that it’s not marijuana.
Now it’s time for the test. A friendly but bored tech will recite the information—you are at increased risk for HIV if you have had sex with a man since 1977 who has had sex with other men. You are at increased risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if you have received medical care in Europe since 1986. There is a short quiz, which I found ridiculously easy, but the tech assures me that many people struggle with it.
Finally, you are approved! Now you wait, this time where you can see and hear the plasmapheresis machines. The air is filled with soft beeping, and reclining everywhere are bored-looking people hooked up to machines that are sucking up their blood and spitting it back in. They lie in blue vinyl chairs with tubes snaking out their arms and spiraling up and out. You wait on the hard plastic chair, watching the movie which is muted and subtitled so that the techs can hear the machines.
Finally, it’s your turn! First, last, last four digits of SSN. You are lead to your very own blue reclining chair. Allergic to iodine? It is poured over your arm, thick and muddy orange. Rubber band, pump it up, the needle slides in with a quick, sharp pain. If you’re lucky, your veins are nice and big, and the tech won’t have any trouble getting it in. If you’re unlucky, and have small veins, this step will involve two or three techs taking turns wiggling the needle in your arm.
It is done, the needle is in your vein. The tubing is attached to the machine, and off you go, pumping your fist to make the blood flow. Pump, pump, pump. You can watch the movie while you do this, or many people read or listen to music. There is a little bank of lights on the machine that tells you when to pump and when to rest. You can see the whole process playing out in the machine, trace the journey of your blood from vein to tube to separator, plasma in the collecting bottle, blood back into your arm. The plasma is a nauseating pale orange, but it may save a life.
There are several cycles—pump, rest. In, out. There is no pain, only tedium. Pump, rest. Pump, rest.
Eventually, it is over. A gurgling series of beeps come from the plasmapheresis machine. The tech comes over, slides the needle out, and disconnects the tubes. You are free.
Now you go to another hard plastic chair. Here you wait for your turn at the pay window. Your name is called. You are handed a few bills.
Four hours after the process began, you are $30 dollars richer. It works out to about minimum wage. If you return within a week, you will receive $40 for your next donation. It’s not enough to live on, but it will buy you cigarettes, a six-pack, maybe a pizza for the kids.
Every penny counts these days.
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