I like giving blood. Well, I don’t actually like it in the sense of liking metal things being stuck into my veins, but I like the fact that I can give blood and potentially help someone out. It seems like a nice thing to do and it isn’t a huge inconvenience usually. And they give you cookies and juice when you are done, so who could argue with that?

The problem is that aparently I have a shortness of a certain element in my blood that has recently made my trips to give blood rather brief. I have enough iron in my body that it wouldn’t raised a red flag with my doctor, but Canadian Blood Services has a slightly higher standard than life, and the introductory prick of my finger (which I find actually hurts way more than the needle in the arm) keeps ruling me out as a donor and sending me on my merry way without any further loss of blood (and without the juice and cookies, of course).

In an attempt to stem the tide of rejection, I tried loading up on tasty foods that are also conveniently high in iron. No deal. I started eating oatmeal every day and managed to sneak by the iron limit imposed by CBS, but since there is only so much oatmeal that one can eat before one goes insane, my devotion eventually died down and I was once again refused. I finally accepted that perhaps I require a little more than iron-rich foods to pass the finger test and visited the local nutrition store on the weekend to stock up on a nice little multi-vitamin that would meet the daily recommended dose of iron without requiring me to ingest cement on a daily basis.

What I walked out with was anything but little. After opening the bottle, I had a momentary thought that perhaps the bottle was mislabelled at the packaging plant and that this bottle really should have been headed for a racetrack somewhere, but nonetheless, I was determined to follow through. The first pill went down the hatch no problem, so I popped the second one in and swallowed.

And it stopped.

So I took another swig of my juice and swallowed it again, but the pill would not budge. I finished off my juice with no better results.

At this point I unlocked my front door so that my mother, due to arrive about twenty minutes later, could at least get in and find my lifeless body before my cats started gnawing on it. I also started thinking of ways that I could bring the pill back up. My cats must have thought I had a hairball or something, since they weren’t too concerned about the hacking noises I was making.

As I tried unsuccessfully to extract the pill from my throat, my mind wandered to the memory of a friend a few years ago who had to go to the hospital to get a fry removed from her throat when not other method would extract the spud. I hoped that my fate would not mimic hers. I finally got two huge glasses of juice ready and chugged one after the other and, with luck and a whole lotta swallowing, was finally able to force the pill down my throat, leaving me with only a vague sensation of it remaining in my throat.

This morning, as I prepared the pill box for recycling, I noticed the following disclaimer in nice bold letters: Warning: this package contains enough iron to seriously harm a child.

I honestly don’t think a child could ever get enough of those pills down his or her throat for the iron level to ever be a serious threat. One pill could seriously harm a child, nevermind a whole bottle.

It’s horrible not being able to sleep.

It’s even more horrible when the person beside you is sleeping soundly and you’ve been wide awake for more than an hour, with not even a hint of sleep in sight. Kinda makes you want to nudge him just a little bit, so that you aren’t the only one awake (not that I would do that, oh no).

And this time you can’t blame it on his snoring, although you are tempted to blame it on the kitties and their crazy running around, but then they (the kitties) look at you with those little green eyes, and give you that plaintive little cry that says “we just wanted a chance to cuddle with you, really” and … well, you are still tempted to blame them, but can’t argue with that. So instead you get some juice and surf the net, and hope that eventually the glaring brightness of your computer monitor will tire your eyes out enough to force you to go to bed and attempt to get one more hour’s sleep.

Of course, before the boy, this was the time I got up anyway.