735: Bloody Feelings
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Mitchell was in his 20s when he learned that his mom was getting on a bus or a train twice a week and going to a place where they would stick a needle in her arm and take a pint of blood. And they would keep the plasma and give her back everything else and pay $25 or $35 per pint. Again, you do this twice a week that you needed the cash. And of course, that is not the kind of thing anybody wants to hear their mom has to do. And it took him a few years, but soon as he had the money to step in and help her out, Mitchell told his mom, don't do it anymore, you know, just give you the money and she turned him down. You know, like, don't worry about it. I don't need you to jump in and I'll take care of myself. Even if it's, you know, hubris, at least, I'm not asking you for anything. She loves that saying, what does she say? We do for today what we can't do for forever. What's that mean? It's, it's a, I guess a personal proverb that she uses to trick herself into enduring a crucible. You know, I can do it today. Well, made this especially hard was Mitchell was in New York. His mom was on the other side of the country in Oregon, where he grew up. And it would cause some times and her phone would be turned off and he would have to reach out to his brothers to find out what was happening and if she needed help and then organize the help. We're talking to her about the blood donations and then a bunch of conversations about it led Mitchell to learn everything about it. About the multi-billion dollar companies that buy plasma from people like his mom, about the black doctor Charles Drew invented a way of separating plasma from blood and set up some of America's first blood banks at the start of World War two. And because we were still in Jim Crow, they would not let black people donate blood. Like how symbolic is that that the black guy that invents this process that helps these hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people can't even donate blood. Mitchell's a writer. He's been on our show before. Mitchell has Jackson. He's written about these conversations with his mom and the places that they led him to. Like, for instance, one day he got her talking about blood and patriotism. His mom's taken patriotism, by the way. Is that anybody who says my country right or wrong, no matter what ugly thing happens here, is basically just like a mom. She's the best in her kid, no matter what terrible thing they do. Anyway, during that conversation, she surprised Mitchell by describing her blood donations as the most patriotic thing she does, even though she does it for the money. I guess if we kind of think about patriotism in its best light, it's looking out for the next person. She was just thinking I'm giving a part of me, which is sacred, to benefit someone else. But I think it's also too. My mother is one of those people. She really is the mother who will do anything. She's the mother that has $100 in her account to last her the month. And my brother doesn't have food in his refrigerator and she gives him 80. And this is not a hypothetical. This is a literal. So this is another way of giving. Mitchell, as you talk about it, I just feel so struck with all the things that are bundled up in those little pints of plasma. When you tell this story, it's simultaneously like you're feeling of protectiveness about her and how she's doing and is she doing okay and her wanting to be independent of you and also feeling like she's taking care of other people and also getting money she needs. It's like, and then also it's blood. It's a physical thing. It's all compressed in this little plastic bag, you know? Yeah. It's like both symbolic and literal. I think it's always that way. Maybe because blood is so fundamental, keeping us alive, something we all share, a part of our insides that we all have actually seen with the origin color of a stop sign, it takes on so many other meanings in ways that other things in our body do not. There's blood ties and blood feuds and bad blood between people and the blood of the lamb and Jesus's blood turned to wine. There's the idea of people who are cold-blooded, people who are hot-blooded, and the now discredited notion of how much of this group's blood or that group's blood you have running through your veins. Today on our program, we dive into all kinds of stories about blood. Picture, please, if you will, right now. You know those elevator doors from the shining opening up? I see a blood pouring out right here on the radio, but don't touch that dial. There is so much to say from WBEZChicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Bloody Stay With Us. Myquan started from full bottom now we're here. So we begin today with a story about literal actual blood and this joke, and by the way, hello to all the seven-year-olds in our audience. Why did the nurse bring a red pen to work in case she had to draw blood? Okay, anyway, somebody wrote into our show last summer saying they had a story to tell about being a phlebotomist, a person whose job it is to draw blood for lab tests or donations using, by the way, a needle, not a red pen. Her name is Adele Levine, and she said she was the worst phlebotomist in her whole hospital. One of our producers, Diane, we found that intriguing naturally caught her up, and it turns out she is a perfectly fine phlebotomist, but she did get thrown into the job from a different job without a lot of preparation in some of the most extreme circumstances imaginable, a total fish out of water. Here's Diane. I liked talking to Adele about drawing blood, because as a newbie, she saw everything with beginner's eyes. She was so into it. She talked about veins in this way that I'd never heard before, just ardently. You have to test the vein and should feel bouncy. Like you test it by touching it with your finger? Yeah, touch it and it should sort of bounce, and now I'm always bouncing veins, you know, my own veins. And now I want to try. Oh, do it on the back of your hand. Okay. Yeah, the veins in the front of the rest are not for us. How come? I don't know. I didn't go to phlebotomy school. They just told me that's not for us. Adele didn't ever study phlebotomy because she's actually a physical therapist. She had no plans to ever be sticking people with needles and drawing their blood. But when COVID hit last spring, the hospital she worked at canceled all of her physical therapy appointments and started assigning people to new jobs. I really wanted to work on the loading dock. That was like what I really wanted to do, like I wanted to drive one of those big things around, you know, like lift pallets of supplies. But they didn't need her there. She ended up in phlebotomy, one of the departments of the hospital whose work didn't slow down. And became a total newbie, drafted to draw blood for the very first time in the middle of a pandemic. By the way, she didn't want us to name her hospital because they didn't give her permission to do an interview. Adele spent her first few days following different phlebotomists around the hospital, watching closely as they worked. She was so impressed to watch as they performed even the most basic tasks with incredible elegance. This one phlebotomist, I just was always mesmerized by the way. She like put tape on the back of her hand, like so precisely, always exactly like the exact size piece of tape.
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