The Walk of Shame

Some well-meaning group organized a blood drive when I was in college.  A few of us were convivially joking with each other about some of the screening questions, "Have you been incarcerated for more than 72 consecutive hours?"  I guess that is the magic time point.  Before that, fine.  After...
Lots of people were rejected for blood donations.  It was college and we were young and invincible.

"We thought we were beautiful.  We were all beautiful.  We were in our 20's" - Steve Martin

A girl walked from the private interview room crying.
Our blood drive joking stopped for a few moments - crying over a blood drive?  And not even enough time for a letter to be delivered from the County Health Department???

I've given blood pretty consistently over the years.  The regional blood center often comes to work every eight weeks.  Every two months, a pint of me would flow into a bag and I would get cookies and juice - the hemoglobinic equivalent of kindergarten's animal crackers and orange Fanta.  Over the years, I've donated many gallons of blood.  I've got a pile of pins somewhere recounting all this donated Merlot.  I've given so much that I have permanent pock marks from needle sticks on my inner left elbow.

Lately, I've had problems with donating blood.

No, it isn't due to dengue fever being present in Hawaii when I was there.  It isn't due to my recent tattoos.  And no, I haven't been incarcerated.
I'm deemed too healthy to give blood.
Really ... a person who's corporate health screening BMI determined overweight, a person who really likes cookie dough ice cream and Golden Double Stuff Oreos is too healthy to donate life saving blood.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how spring brings spontaneous weight loss.  I've been biking a lot recently.  The weather is in the glorious early summer period.  When I'm not biking, I'm walking the dogs, mowing the lawn, finding anything to do outside.
As my weight drops, so does my blood pressure and pulse rate.  Since quitting drinking, both of these things have remained stubbornly in the healthy category, but the spring and summer activity drops them even more.
During two recent attempts to donate blood, my resting pulse rate was too low to donate.  The first time it was 49BPM versus the cutoff of 50BPM.  They checked it again with an identical result and I was told I could not donate.  Fifty beats per minute seems to be an arbitrary hard cutoff.  Marathon runners can have a resting pulse rate of 40BPM.  Miguel Indurain, a competitive bicyclist once recorded a resting pulse of 28BPM.
The second failed attempt at donating blood was due to a pulse rate of 43BPM, retested at 44BPM.  To be honest, I was surprised at this rate; maybe I need more stress in my life.  The donation crew attempted to get a doctor waiver to allow me to donate, but the doctor didn't return the phone call or page.  Hopefully doctors have better things to do.  Wait ... do doctors really still have pagers???  How very 1980's.
And so for the second time recently, I had to do the walk of shame outside of the back of the blood donation bus.  My colleagues silently judging me.  My coworkers assuming I am a zika infected, syphilitic, recently-released inmate.

I think I'm done donating blood.  I really hate the walk of shame - so now I feel a little bad for the girl who couldn't donate back in college.  Maybe she was too healthy as well.
After I got home from work on the day of the failed donation attempt, I rode my bike just under 25 miles.  That will show them.  I guess the next bleeding car crash victim will just need to use the donation from some other nacho-eating bicyclist with different genes.
No A+ for you!