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March 23, 2005

Don't Mail Your Blood

I opened a Priority Mail envelope from our friends at the United States Postal Service. I send and receive those cardboard envelopes all the time, and I don't know how I missed this warning:

Do not send blood in this envelope.

Boy, that was really a consideration of mine. I have to restrain myself from mailing my O+ all around the world. *rolling eyes*

Kinda reminds me of a half-gross, half-funny, half-heartwarming (oops, that's more than 1 whole, isn't it?) story from a kid when I student-taught.

Melvin was a third grader in the class where I did my student- teaching. Melvin (no, that's not his name, but he had an equally old-fashioned name) and his family had immigrated from Malaysia in Melvin's infancy. He was a pudgy little guy (maybe the term would be more polite if I used "stout" or "solid") and was overly sensitive to everything. One cross look and he was in tears. He also kept a very messy desk, which plays a role in this story. I student-taught during the fall semester of 2001, so I was hard at work during the September 11th crisis. Melvin had, like all the other kids that semester, been overexposed to planes crashing into buildings, seeing photographs of the victims, and heard the pleas for supplies, blood donations, etc.

Since papers were messily sticking out of Melvin's desk, one of my supervising teachers asked me to help him clean and organize it during recess. He loved the attention so much that it didn't bother him to miss recess, so he was very pleased that I was sent to help him and visit with him. We had a good talk while we were pulling everything out of his desk...until it happened.

Out of his desk plopped a Ziploc sandwich bag. It was about an eighth full of reddish goo.

Me: Hey, Melvin, what's this? (holding up bag, assuming it was the remnant of a science experiment before my arrival)
Melvin: Blood.
Me: (immediately dropping bag) Blood?! Why?
Melvin: Because they said I'm not old enough to donate blood to the people in New York, but I wanted to give them some anyway.
Me: Where are you getting this blood?
Melvin: Anytime I scratch a scab, I squeeze the blood into my bag.
Me: Oh. Oh, my. Um, I'm gonna have the teacher talk to you, OK?

I don't know how Melvin's bag disappeared; I'm sure the teacher had to wear gloves and dispose of it in the nurse's hazardous biowaste bin. Yuck. Yet, the little guy cared so much and was so troubled that he wanted to donate his blood even though he was only 8. Sweet kid.

But that brings me back to the original statement: don't mail blood through the US Postal Service, at least not in a cardboard envelope, OK?

Posted by Anna at March 23, 2005 08:53 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Jade at March 23, 2005 07:36 PM

Posted by: Christopher at March 23, 2005 10:15 PM

Posted by: Keely at March 23, 2005 10:29 PM

Posted by: jayrockstone at March 24, 2005 08:07 AM