I’ve Got Nothing

Yesterday I headed off to the Infusion Center for my first therapeutic phlebotomy of 2010. I was hoping for a great deal of idiocy to transpire so that I could employ my usual augmentary sarcasm to fluff up another posting. It was not to be, McGee.

I called up the place about 11:04 AM and said that I would like to come in for my usual dance with the bloodticks. The girl on the other end of the line said, “Well, Zaphod, when would you like to be here?” I told her about 11:07 AM. There was silence for a moment; it was a joke after all, but the train was a little late getting to the station. Finally she said, coldly, “How would 2:00 this afternoon be?” I told her that I would be there with bells on. There was another short pause. “Who is this Belzon character? He’s not on my list. Does he want a phlebotomy too?” I told her that Belzon was my secret friend and that he like to watch as my life-force slipped away into a plastic bag. “Alrighty, then!” she said. “We’ll look forward to seeing you both!” I thought that unlikely, both as to the “looking forward” and the “seeing”.

I arrived a little early; I didn’t have anything else to do. I saw the “Lady in Red”, “Chester”, and “Gory” and I concluded that I was, once again, doomed. “Chester” had performed the last phlebotomy and I still had the scar from her fiddling. Imagine! Two months after she poked me I can still see where the pipe went in. “Gory” was attending to a young woman across the way who looked quite stricken and concerned about what was going on. I tried to cheer her up.

“There is one thing you can say about all this,” I began. “No matter what, this is the worst thing that is going to happen to you today”.

She laughed and thereafter completely ignored me. (Actually, that is not entirely true. I kept being noisily cheerful the whole time I was there and when the angels of death were not hovering about, she actually smiled.)

I was afraid that if “Chester” showed up to work me over, I would say something churlish about the pipe-fitters union and the scar tissue at the elbow joint of my right arm. Fortunately for everyone concerned, it was the “Lady in Red” who dragged in the paraphernalia. I almost didn’t recognize her; she was dressed in blue. “Aren’t you the ‘Lady in Red’?” I asked.

“Only on Fridays. On Thursdays, I am the ‘Blue Girl’ in honor of my great ancestors Jonathan Buttall and Thomas Gainsborough. On Wednesdays, I wear some other color, as well as Tuesdays and Mondays. Sometimes I am ‘Mauve-woman’, other times I am ‘Puce-lass’, and occasionally the “Angel of Mercy’. Thursdays and Fridays are pretty well set in stone, however. The dye is cast, you might say. Hehehehehe!”

She placed a absorbent two-foot square pad under my left arm, and then draped herself with a gigantic plastic drop cloth. “Not feeling particularly optimistic today?” I queried.

“One can never be too careful with you, Zaphod. Your blood is under so much pressure that sticking you with a needle is like poking a dead cow with a stick. Do you know that you are the only person who comes in here whose blood pressure is higher after the phlebotomy than before.”

“It must be the company I keep,” I replied.

While all this chatter was going on, “Blue-girl” had prepped my arm, shot me with anesthesia, and had driven in the silver spike. All of this transpired without me feeling a thing; there was no sting of any kind. The blood flowed freely, according to my attendant. In a matter of a few moments she had extracted 575 ml of my sanguinity. “Blue-girl” had me hold the cotton swab in place after she pulled out the needle. “Do you think that I could hit the girl across the hall if I held my arm just right?”

“There is no question in my mind!”

The root beer was warm; someone had failed to fill the refrigerator. Fortunately, there was plenty of ice and not much time passed before I was munching my Lorna Doones and swilling my Barq’s. By the time I was finished, there was not a soul in the office. I wondered where the three had gone. I walked out to the parking lot and for some reason turned around to look at the building. “Blue-girl”, “Gory”, and “Chester” were on the roof watching me. I waved. Blue-girl shouted to me.

“Each time you come we have an office pool. The bet has to do with how close you will get to your car before you pass out. I won today!” She was jumping up and down like a school girl.

I wonder what sorts of gaming goes on at the University Health Care Center when I show up.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into the Water

It is wonderful to have people interested in your welfare. My immediate family has been quite supportive of my occasional tirades against the genes that force my duodenum to inhale vast amounts of iron. When I have hinted that my physician, “Doc Holliday”, has seemed somewhat cavalier about my progress or lack thereof, the whole outfit wants to break out the pitchforks and torches, and storm the castle where he regular hooks me up to the diodes running from the lightning rods on the roof. “Doctor Holinstein! Ve har komink fur SIE! Let ur liddle bunny go!” Well, it just warms the heart.

Once in a while I get a remark from some of my readers throughout the world. Most of the time they are supportive; others have desired to advertize their own products of whimsy; others, from time to time, actually make suggestions that have significance. Hence, the “Flying Finn” has often suggested that I need to eat European chocolate rather than the wax-overloaded American kind. For this suggestion I have been grateful, inasmuch as it has justified my penchant for buying 20-pound sacks of Riesens, a delightful product that only has 7% of my daily requirement for iron, and that is only an estimate because they are not quite certain how many animal parts actually got caught in the machinery. Remember, if it is tangy, it can’t be bad for you.

In response to my previous blog, “Rusted Nut” (not his real name….. I hope) made mention of something I had not thought of before. He suggested that maybe my ferritin spike might have come from an inflammation or an infection, if I had been under the weather at the time my ferritin was drawn. He spoke of ferritin being an “acute phase reactant”. BINGO! I have had some sort of sino-bronco-throato gunk weighing me down for the past month. I have been miserable, loading up on Clariton D-12, Robitussin DM, Halls cough drops, and Riesens on a daily basis as part of my treatment. I was feeling so bad the day that I went into have my ferritin sample drawn, that I laid my head down on one of the arms of the extraction chair and the Lab Tick filled her jar by tapping into a vein in my ear. “This is it! My ferritin went up, not because I am some sort of tooth and claw carnivore, but because I am a beef-eating mensch with a cold".

I, therefore, have thrust myself into the deep waters of cyber-space again to see what I could find out about “acute phase reactants”. The water is black, ice cold, and speaks German. As part of my research I came across the finest explanation yet as to how ferritin and transferrin work in the body and how they relate to hemochromatosis. The article is called “Ferritin and Transferrin In Iron Deficiency and Overload” by Rolf D. Hinzmann, M.D., Ph.D., European Scientific and Technical Support, Beckman Coulter, Germany. It originally appeared in “Immunodiagnostics Today” 12:1 Spring Fall 1999. I came away from the read as well informed as any other incident in my personal studies. I commend it to you

With regard to elevated ferritin counts produced by infections, even the CDC was helpful in their article on ferritin.

“Ferritin is present in the blood in very low concentrations. Plasma ferritin is in equilibrium with body stores, and its concentration declines early in the development of iron deficiency. Low serum ferritin concentrations thus are sensitive indicators of iron deficiency. Ferritin is also an acute-phase protein; acute and chronic diseases can result in increased ferritin concentration, potentially masking an iron-deficiency diagnosis. The generally accepted cut-off level for serum ferritin below which iron stores are considered to be depleted is 15 ng/mL"

Answers.com did not disappoint either.

“If ferritin is high there is iron in excess, which would be excreted in the stool.” Well, well, well; another mystery solved.

“Ferritin is also used as a marker for iron overload disorders, such as hemochromatosis and porphyria in which the ferritin level may be abnormally raised.” Let’s hear it for Abby Normal and Igor quivering in the dungeon of the castle. "Help us, Doctor Holinstein! Oh, the torches! Oh, the pitchforks! Oh, the humanity!"

“As ferritin is also an acute-phase reactant, it is often elevated in the course of disease. A normal C-reactive protein can be used to exclude elevated ferritin caused by acute phase reactions.” Well, the Lab Tick certainly didn’t think of that as she was massaging my left earlobe, did she?

“Ferritin can be elevated during periods of acute malnourishment.” So, in an attempt to improve my ferritin count, we all went out to eat at Carrabas last night where I stuffed myself with Lentil and Italian Sausage soup, Pollo Rosa Maria, Broccoli Ambrosia, and loads of hot bread dipped in olive oil and special seasonings. I have felt absolutely transcendent ever since.

Finally, as a ray of hope, I discovered that aspirin might help reduce my ferritin by reducing the inflammation before trundling off to the Little Shop of Horrors in January. So, if I am still hacking up lung parts after New Years, I will add a little Bayer (more German) to my regimen and watch my ferritin tally plummet to new lows. Thanks RN (not his real name…. I hope), you have made the holidays far more enjoyable.

“The Name is Bond, Zaphod Bond”

Since receiving the results of my ferritin check last Saturday, I have had three movie scenes stuck in my head, all of which have serious implications in my battle against iron-overloading.

The first was actually from a television series called “Hunter” that ran from 1984 to 1991. It was television’s answer to Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry”. I do not think that I ever watched a complete episode. Given the ratings, I am doubtful that anyone watched a complete episode. However, one evening as I was channel-surfing, I happened upon the final scene of a “Hunter” episode that completely bowled me over. Hunter (played by Fred Dryer) and his partner McCall (played by Stefanie Kramer) had chased a villain to the top of a high-rise in Los Angeles. The culprit was standing on the ledge of the building, being defiant and sassy, and before Hunter could shoot him in the head (which was Hunter’s style), the guy slipped and fell twenty stories to the sidewalk below. Hunter walked over to the edge of the building, peered over, raised his eyebrows, and uttered his favorite catch-phrase, “Works for me!” Accompanying the lab report from the University of Utah, “Doc Holliday” sent a note that read, in part, “Excellent ferritin levels, Zaphod. Keep up your current treatment of phlebotomies. Works for me!”

The second scene is from a movie that I have never watched from beginning to end. Like the Hunter episode, I have only seen the end. In 1963, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Gene Hackman starred in a movie called “The Gypsy Moths”, a film developed from the novel of the same name by James Drought. The story involves three sky-divers and their thrill show during a 4th of July celebration in a small mid-western town. The catch-phrase in this movie is one that Lancaster says regarding the spirit of sky-diving: “When you turn on by falling free… when jumping is not only a way to live, but a way to die too… then you’re a Gypsy Moth.” In the final scene, Lancaster makes his final jump of the show, free-falling a mile or so, drawing closer and closer to the ground. All of the crowd is horrified; his partners watch calmly, knowing that there is plenty of time for Burt to pull his rip-cord. Burt gets closer and closer to the ground, people are screaming hysterically, the partners are beginning to get nervous. Then Burt hits the ground doing about 500 miles an hour. He bounces some, but not a lot. I have wondered about that bounce for a long time, how it would feel. When I opened my letter from the University Health Center last Saturday, I had my answer. I think that Trillium, my sister Judie, and the rest of my concerned family, once they finish reading this posting are going to wonder about the bounce, too.

The third scene is, for my money, the greatest scene in all of the James Bond movies. Pierce Brosnan is at the top of the highest dam I have ever seen in my life (the Verzasca Dam in Switzerland), dressed in ninja black, and after the camera pulls back a little, he jumps off in a lovely swan dive. I am not certain how long the scene takes, but at 32 feet per second per second, James Bond must have been about to break the sound-barrier near the end of the dive. Just at the last second, the enormous bungee cord comes into play, 007 is able to shoot his little dart gun, and reel himself to the top of the building at the bottom of the dam. There were two things about that scene that have troubled me. First, what happened to the cord when James cut himself loose? The whiplash from the tension should have taken out half of the Soviet army. Second, how much taller was our hero after that jump? I estimate about a foot and a half. Needless to say, I favor this last picture over the previous two for a couple of reasons. First, I am the hero who overcomes all eventualities and second, I don’t die a miserable death by actually hitting the ground. That is how I feel about the lab report on my ferritin levels.

Four months ago, my ferritin level was at 136, after a year-long, continuous free-fall from the astonishing heights of 827. Two months ago, probably due to the rather cavalier attitude that I had developed about my prospects, my ferritin went up one point to 137. I had been expecting another 50 point drop, but it was not forthcoming. So for the last two months, I have tried to be good. Other than an occasional Swedish meatball, and an infrequent wheat-dog, I have really been circumspect about what I have been eating. Saturday’s report snatched me by my bootstraps: my ferritin had gone up to 160. “Doc Holliday” was happy, my family was momentarily horrified, and I started looking for my little dart gun.

I am not certain what has happened, but I am being proactive and during the next few weeks I will be posting my findings. I have also conjured up some rather radical treatment plans which should prove amusing, if not effective. Fear not! I am not splattered around the countryside; I am just having to duck beneath every door jam in the house.

Blood is Thicker Than Water

The saga continues. I went to the Infusion Center yesterday to have my vein tapped again. I have been behaving myself, so I have been hoping for a significant drop in my ferritin. In two weeks I will have my answer. If it turns out that all of my skimping and starving has been to no avail, that my ferritin count has basically remained the same as two months ago, I will jump from the Vegan life raft and rejoin the passengers and crew of the S.S. Omnivore. Chester, my specialist for the day, was not optimistic. She checked my hemoglobin: “Hmmm! This isn’t good! Your hemoglobin is at 17 (times three is 41) and you are not anemic at all. The doctor wants you to be anemic.” What! I did not know that! “Doc Holliday” never said anything about my becoming anemic! He just didn’t want me to ironic!

How does a fellow like me ever become anemic? Is it even possible for someone with hemochromatosis to become anemic? My body sucks up every third nano-gram of iron that I stuff into my pie-hole. I suppose that if I went on a starvation diet (much like the one I am on now), I might deplete my iron supply, but with a 136 ferritin count, I cannot even dream of becoming anemic. Now if my ferritin count were below 50, I might consider Chester’s observation about my hemoglobin as having some merit. For the time being, however, I am just going to assume that she has suffered a brain aneurism.

I was my usual bon vivant self, ebullient and radiating whining confidence as I walked into the parlor. “Ooooo! Zaphod! You’re back! How nice for us! Why don’t you settle down in Booth 1?”

“Because there is someone else already there?”

“Hmmmm. So there is. How about Booth 4? Is there anyone in there?”

There wasn’t, so I sat down, wondering who was going to end up in my lap. I was directly across from a lady who was receiving some sort of infusion. It did not look like blood. After sitting quietly for a minute or two, one of the other nurses flitted by and commented on the fact that the lady in Booth 1 had not been attended to for some time. She wondered out loud where “Gory” and his playmates were. I am not certain that that question was ever answered, even though I saw him an hour later as I was leaving. I wondered if I was going to be left unattended while they took my pint, allowing the bag to blow up like some sort of post-apocalyptic tick. Hmmmm! Anemia was possible under certain circumstances!

After about ten minutes, Chester showed up with her little bag of tricks and began working me over. “You know,” I said, “when I was in here 6 months ago, the nurse that administered the phlebotomy said that the needle wasn’t supposed to hurt, and that the only sting that I should experience was the Lytacane. Yet the last two times that I have had blood drawn, the whole process was painful. I felt the needles in spite of the Lytacane.”

“Well,” she replied, “it is nice that you are so susceptible to suggestion. These things always hurt; there is no escaping the pain; the holes in your arm are real. Look at the size of this needle! Does that look painless to you?” Chester has a wonderful chair-side manner. “Of course, it is possible to increase the amount of Lytacane a little so that it actually has some anesthetic effect. Would you like that? How about if I take your blood from the same arm where I put the Lytacane? Would that be an improvement, in your double-doctorate opinion?” I said that I thought that both options might be worth a try.

Chester always compliments me on my veins. Everyone compliments me on my veins. I have lovely veins. When my children were very young, they would entertain themselves by playing with the veins in the back of my hand. I found that somehow soothing; I generally fell asleep about half way through Church. My children found that amusing, particularly when I began to snore. Today, Chester had a bit of a conundrum to deal with. “Which of all these lovely veins to you want me to tap? They are all so lovely!” I suggested that my contemplating the matter did not tend to sooth me. “Well, then, I will just poke you HERE!” When I came to a few minutes later, Chester was fussing with the needle and the tubing. “Your blood seems a little thick today, Dr. Beeblebrox. Have you been overdosing on corn starch?” I had not. In fact, I had not partaken of breakfast or lunch that day. “Well,” she said, “Perhaps it would be better in the future to drink a lot of fluids before you come to give blood. This is like trying to siphon a quart of molasses from a fifty-gallon drum in the dead of winter.”

She horsed around with the needle for a while. “OH! That’s got it! No! Yes! No! No! No! Yes! Yes! WOW!” By the end of the hour, she had managed to coax out 480 milliliters, a pint, or some other indefinable amount of blood. She stopped at that point because, said she, I had “clotted out”, whatever that meant. I wondered if I was going to have an aneurism too.

I left the building and drove up to Shy’s house where Trillium was watching Lily’s siblings. I ate peanut butter cookies with my grandson, wondering if the cookies were going to thicken my blood any more than it already was. As we waited for Lily’s daddy to show up after his visit with the Mamma Dandelion, I drifted off, perhaps in anticipation that Lily would one day find the veins in my hand fascinating and amusing.

HU NU?

Well, my faithful readers are stuck with another “nothing” posting about hemochromatosis because I have a compulsion to write and nothing to write about. My next phlebotomy will not take place until the middle of November and the ferritin check will not be made until about the first of December.

I do, however, take the opportunity to report some necessary corrections to my previous posting. My ferritin count did not go down a point; it went UP a point from 135 to 136. Bad math skills on my part. The fact that no one picked up on the gaff is a telling one. HU NU? Apparently no one.

I have to say as well that I have cut back on my red meat. For the past week or so I have had not even one wheat dog. We went to Sizzler on Tuesday and I did not have a steak! What’s down with that! I had the senior Malibu chicken, which was made of an extremely old sand dollar, a piece of ham and a tasteless mass of cheese. I was assured that there was very little iron in the meal and so when the waitress said “Enjoy!” I tried to respond in a positive way. It was about as positive as my last change in ferritin. All I have to say is that if I want chicken any time soon, I think I will drive down to Spanish Fork and kill my own, run over it with the car, carve the individual servings out with a snickerdoodle cutter, and cook the whole mess on my radiator on the way home. I think that is the Sizzler recipe.

Now that I can do nothing about my blood count, other than abstinence, I have begun to focus on my supplements. I have wondered for the last year or so why they have not been working as well as they should have, if I am to believe the propaganda the holistic medicine people. In the midst of all this consternation, I forgot to take my pills in the morning a couple of weeks ago, not getting to them until after lunch. A wonderful thing happened. I slept six straight hours and didn’t wet the bed. For the record, I have not wet the bed for more than sixty-three years, but I was stunned that I did not have to get up every two hours to maintain my record. I thought that maybe the reason why I was able to go so long without going, was that I had taken the saw palmetto later in the day. I began to wonder about my other pills. When is it better to take them all, in the morning or in the evening? What follows are the results of my investigation.

Lisinopril: I couldn’t even remember how to spell “lisinopril” and was somewhat shocked when I googled “liprinasil” this morning and obtained no hits whatsoever. “Oh, no!” I said to myself, “I am taking a medication that is not made on this planet, completely unknown in cyberspace!” By now, you have figured out that I googled the wrong word, but Google wasn’t even smart enough to figure out what I really wanted. HU NU? Not them!

Well, I finally got the right name and found out an interesting thing. "Wikianswers" suggests that “usually, lisinopril is taken in the morning if your blood pressure is highest in the afternoon or in the evening if your blood pressure is highest in the morning". I frankly did not want to take my blood pressure twice a day to find out what I needed to do, so I completely ignored that piece of information. Eventually I found a posting by “SueAnn56” who confided to her readers, “My cardio explained that he wanted my blood pressure to be low at night and upon awakening so that my body could rest.” Hence, she takes her blood pressure medicine at night. I figured if “SueAnn56” could have that clear of a convenient reason for an afternoon tipple, “Zaphod67” could as well. I suspect that some of my good night’s rest for the past two weeks has been directly related to the fact that I have been taking my lisinapril near dinner time.

Saw palmetto: My research on saw palmetto was perfunctory because I was certain that the benefits of taking the supplement in the evening had already been proven somewhat. But I did come up with some interesting facts about saw palmetto and Flomax. The two work completely different from one another, the former apparently being far more effective in helping with some of the conditions that tend toward prostate cancer. “Spreademocracy” had this little tidbit.

Regarding Saw Palmetto, as a precaution, it might be wise to know what your DHT blood count is. Then, based on that knowledge, to discuss taking this herbal with your GP or Uro. What works for others may not work for you in the long run. For example, if you have high DHT, you may not be able to impact it sufficiently with Saw Palmetto and will lose valuable time that could have been spent containing the problem and keeping your prostate from growing. Or, you may need to swallow so many Saw Palmetto pills that you may want to jump right to PROSCAR or AVODART. (P.S., if taking large quantities of Saw Palmetto, you may want to do so with meals since it may be a tad easier on the stomach. If you have liver, kidney problems, or are going for any surgical procedures, seek medical advice before self dosing.) Best wishes to you!

Thanks, SD, I only take one pill, at night, and I seemed to be doing okay. Best wishes to you, too, but you could have been a little more specific about what you really wished for me.

Chondroitin and Glucosamine: Trillium has been telling me for some time that these two “doodahs” probably aren’t doing a whole lot for me. I had just bought a fifty-pound sack of the pills at the time she clarified her views and I thought that maybe I ought to use them up before I abandoned all hope for a completely regenerated knee joint. By the way, I have no trouble at all with my joints which is probably due to one of two things: one, I take a daily dose of chondroiton and glucosamine; or two, I have no problems at all with my joints. I did discover, however, that there is nothing in this world better than chondroiton and glucosamine if you are a dog with arthritis. I am not holding my breath, dog or otherwise, to find out the truth of this matter.

Vitamin D3: Apparently, taking this wunder-vit is good any time of the day. If you are, however, suffering from chronic renal failure, the medicos suggest that taking Vitamin D in the evening is better than in the morning. I neither desire nor need renal failure added to my list of maladies to justify my evening dose. It simply goes down with the rest of what I am taking because all of the pills are already separated into the daily slots of my weekly meds tube.

Fish Oil: My last oral bombshell is my Omega 3 Fish Oil gelcap. I found a lot of chatter on the internet about options, but here is my favorite.

With the recent addition of evening primrose oil, my morning pills now include:

1 prenatal vitamin
1 fish oil capsule (for Omega 3)
2 red raspberry leaf capsules (I also take 2 with lunch and 2 with dinner)
2 evening primrose oil capsules

Holy wow. And then my burps taste nasty for hours. Anyone else in the same boat? Anyone just decide it's not worth it? I admit I'm a bit of a vitamin freak... Leoba

HOLY WOW, LEOBA! TAKE IT AT NIGHT! Of course, my informant is eight months pregnant and may not respond well to masculine reasoning. I think that I might try the evening primrose oil and the raspberry leaf capsules just to see if I can produce sympathetic labor pains in the middle of the night.

There you have it. The latest from an old man who is frittering away his Friday morning hours blathering about stuff that will help no one feel at ease with iron-overloading, except for those of us who have suddenly realized that Leoba is about to give birth to a nine-pound salmon. With a smile on my face, I am about to head up to the kitchen to find prenatal vitamins; we’re getting close to the Christmas holidays and I want to be ready.

What's Down With That?

I am here to report that I have managed to live my life such that during the past two months, notwithstanding the phlebotomy two weeks ago, my ferritin count only dropped 1 point, to 136. What's up with that?

I thought at first that perhaps the problem was that I had both the phlebotomy and the ferritin sample taken from the same arm. Think about it. If my body senses a steep decline in iron at my left elbow, what do you think it is going to do? Is it not going to send a big batch of ferritin to that side of my body? I should have had "She Who Shall Remain Nameless" take the ferritin sample from my right elbow where there would have been considerably less iron.

Once the lunacy of that conclusion revealed itself, I thought about other possibilities. I have concluded that I have gotten just a little too laid back, putting all of my iron eggs into one basket, as it were. I apparently decided that I really didn't need to watch what I ate during the past two months, inasmuch as as the blood-letting has been doing the trick during the past year. Let me give you a few examples.

About a month ago, Trillium brought home a 2 and one-half pound bag of Hershey's Treasures. Except for an occasional Grinchy doling out of a few pieces to one of my grand-daughters and two of my chocoholic daughters, I hammered down the whole bag by myself. Did you know that Hershey's chocolate is 247% pure iron? Well, not that much but it does contain 2% of one's daily requirement of iron, the sugar facilitating the complete absorption of every molecule, not just the 30% we hemochromatosis types allow into the sluice. My guess is that the sugar goes straight to the duodenum and opens up the floodgate for every atom that has an "Fe" engraved on it, no matter what its source.

Since we have been enjoying great grilling weather here in Utah, Trillium thought that it would be nice if we had some dinners a-la-Zaphod. We could have had halibut, or mahi-mahi. We might have gone for tofu burgers. Even baked Alaska is possible on my new grill. Did I go for any of these sensible alternatives to semi-liquid iron sources at Costco? No! I bought rib-eye steaks; two-inch thick rib-eye steaks. I also mixed in at least two or three meals of tri-tip steak. On top of that there were the frequent hamburger barbecues. I was managing to drive iron spikes into every organ of my body and thoroughly enjoying myself in the process.

At some point, in the middle of all of this indulgence, Trillium and I went out to eat at Outback. I ordered a Victoria steak, medium, and received a juicy 8-ounce piece of beef just this side of "Moo!" The boys and girls there were sorry that I had dined on living flesh, so they brought us dessert for free, which again guaranteed that every bite of that steak was destined to reach my pancreas. What's a poor boy to do?

The drop of one point of ferritin disappointed me. I am certain that my sister is going to respond to this latest development with sternness, the kind of sternness that only a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers can deliver properly. Going out with Trillium has been limited to french fries at Carl's Jr., soup and salad at the Olive Garden, and in the back yard at the apple tree. Hopefully the first of December will bring a more satisfactory result. Tonight we had a dinner that revolved around an iron-depleting plate of chicken enchiladas. I have to be better by Christmas or I will be eating coal.

The Iron Cross

I am not much for awards for personal heroics, but I had an experience last night that demands, in my mind at least, that there should be something done of an outward nature to reward the people in question.

A few months ago, I was ironically asked by the leaders of our Church to be in charge of the semi-annual blood drive wherein our 3500 members are given an opportunity to donate to the American Red Cross. There was a great deal of humor generated when the officers of the Church discovered the nature of my genetic condition. A few wanted to know if it was contagious and, if so, would I infect them. They apparently have some sort of fear of needles as well.

In any event, I have spent the last couple of months coordinating the arrangements between the ARC and the Church so that the building would be ready for them to set up their equipment and to have sufficient donors there to make their visit worthwhile. In times past during the last five years, about 25 to 30 units of blood have been donated at each session. Anita, my contact, was certain that we could do better, but nothing up to this point had proven effective. I said that I would do what I could. She, by the way, also found it outrageously humorous that I was to be the person in charge.

Without going into all of the particulars, I will simply say that by the time the drive started at 3:00 yesterday afternoon, we had 118 people pre-registered to donate blood. By the time of the end of the drive, at 8:00 PM, the Red Cross had been able to collect 78 units of blood. They had skeptically only brought 80 pieces of equipment to the affair, thinking that our estimates were just a little high. They were surprised and pleased. I hope that they don’t expect greater things in the spring. I did, however, learn some things from the experience.

First, it is not a good thing to have a cold, the flu, typhoid fever, mad cow disease, or malaria just prior to coming to give blood. The ARC considers that state of affairs a sanguinary sarcasm of the first order and treats the afflicted one with a certain degree of contempt. Of course, each individual had been given a 20-page booklet to read when they first registered, in which the mad cow disease was specifically mentioned. Some of the workers were certain that not everyone was taking the required time with the booklet. I frankly thought that they were just extremely fast readers like Evelyn Wood. I wonder if she gave blood fast.

Additionally it is important to know that if you have spent any length of time in a foreign country like Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Outer Mongolia, or New Mexico, you won’t be allowed to give blood. New Mexico is included on the list because most people working for the American Red Cross do not realize that the place is really a State in the United States. This fact is complicated by the fact that President Ulysses S. Grant said, while travelling through New Mexico, “I understand that we fought a war with Mexico for this desolate piece of property. I think that we ought to fight another war to force them to take it back!” One fellow served as a missionary in England several years ago during the mad cow scare and he has never been allow to donate blood since. He came last night to see if the prohibition was still in effect. It was and the ARC ushered him out of the building by enticing him with a bale of hay.

Some of the potential donors had blood vessels that were too small. When I go to the Infusion Center, the ghouls there use a 14-gauge needle on me. There is a virtual torrent of blood that pours though that stainless steel needle. I asked one of the nurses last night what size they were using. She said that they regularly employ a 16-gauge needle. Any larger than that and the blood vessels don’t cooperate, she said. I began to wonder why the Infusion Center chose to deal with me as they have. Maybe at 6’4 and 230 pounds I can be drained with less finesse.

I was startled at some of the developments during the night, events which were treated with such a baize attitude that I concluded that these were regular happenings at these organized blood-lettings. I was sitting at the registration table, minding my own business, when I heard a “thump”. I turned to see what was going on and there was a young mother who had just given blood, on her hands and knees. She had blacked out on her way to the refreshment area. She was propped up on the floor, with a little pillow and a bottle of water until she could recover sufficiently. Not five feet away was an empty gurney on to which I thought she should have been placed, but the attendants simply made her comfortable where she was. Her baby boy and her friend that she had come with sat on the floor next to her. They were there about 25 minutes. I propose that this girl be given the “Iron Cross” for her pains. This award for valor was first given by the Prussians in 1813 in conjunction with the Napoleonic Wars. I think that since she had to suffer there on the floor rather than on the gurney that her medal be upgraded to the “Grand Cross of the Iron Cross” for her troubles. A lovely and appropriate tribute.

As I was wandering about during the drive, I met another donor who, for some unexplained reason was splattered all over his right side with what I am certain was his own blood. When I asked about it, someone said, “Oh, that happens all the time!”

I thought to myself, “You know, I have been giving blood for over a year, both by the pint and by the ounce, and I have yet to be drenched in my own blood, even though I have joked about the possibility.” The fellow was cheerful about the resultant spray, almost as if he had been shot down over Belgium somewhere. Well, I think that someone ought to strap the “Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross With Blood Squirts” around that fellow’s neck. He deserves the recognition.

The last episode concerns a rather large man, young and full of life, who came into the building about 6:30. He was almost the last person to leave the place. He sat strapped to a table for over an hour and a half while the technicians tried to find a vein that would work. They never did. When he got up from the place where he had been tied down, he staggered a bit. I asked him if he was okay. He said, “Yeah, it’s just that my leg fell asleep.” He had track marks up and down the inside of both arms where they had attempted to put in the needles. I had the willies for an hour after that. I decided that the American Red Cross needed to come up with a special award for his valor under fire, as it were. I recommend the “Knight’s Cross with Gold Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds”. Erwin Rommel got that in 1943 and he didn’t have nearly as many holes in him as my friend did.

I arrived home shortly before ten after having put everything away with a few of the brethren. The techs were gracious enough to swab up the blood and iodine, but we still had to put way the tables and chairs.

I think that the next time I go down to the Infusion Center that I am going to ask for the “Star of the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross with Sarsaparilla Sprigs and Lorna Doone Clusters”. It’s about time!