To Visit A Church During the COVID-19 Pandemic, I Donated Blood to the Red Cross

Monday June 15, 2020 at 3:00 PM

Streator Incubator, Streator, Illinois

Terror has visited me today. I signed up to give blood at the Lutheran Church near City Park today. I see prompts in my email weekly. I finally found a blood drive when I could donate at the end of the day. I have a strong motivation to give. I promised myself to give as often as I could after my mother’s death in Spring of 2016.

The volunteers will wipe all surfaces again and again with sanitizer. All donors and nurses will be wearing face masks. The mini-physical at intake checks blood pressure and temperature. The staff must check their temperature at the beginning of the day, right? It’s a great day to flout COVID-19 and give blood despite the pandemic.

How the Red Cross will check my blood? The lab checks for venereal disease, including AIDS. Why wouldn’t the Red Cross check for COVID-19 and COVID-19 antibodies? I would love to have the two tests run on my blood.

I’ve given blood since my seventeenth year when I organized a blood drive in Byron, Michigan. I organized it for the student council. We welcomed donors in the basement of the Masonic Lodge. The Masons helped out, offering cookies, coffee and lemonade. I felt I had helped out my town and county. If I have given once a year since then, I donated forty pints of blood. I have given more than once a year. I have always worked for employers who sponsored four drives a year.

I haven’t given since October of last year. That fall, I wanted to give at the Round Lake Fire Department. I rolled up on my bike and walked in without an appointment. All the drives need appointments due to the pandemic. Then I cycled six miles through the hills around Ballston Lake, feeling happy and strong. I cooled my heels on a dock jutting into the lake, dug by a glacier. I caught the bus into Saratoga Spring, happy to be alive.

I’m happy to be alive today too. I wish we were closer to the end of the pandemic. I can only hope my blood contains part of the solution.

Monday June 15, 2020 at 7:30 PM

Streator Incubator, Streator, Illinois

Giving blood had felt dangerous and exciting. What a strange thought. Why would one grow excited for a needle poke in my left arm? Why would I want to bleed one pint, even for the good of a person I don’t know? I’ll never know who will benefit.

I haven’t seen the insides of a church since March, the Unitarian Universalist Church in San Antonio. The large church brought in the Texas sunshine. The congregation gathered in a courtyard during the education time before church. We sat on limestone block benches, carved from the buttes between Austin and San Antonio. And three months later, I showed up to give blood inside a small, modest Lutheran church.

I hand-sanitized at the door. I put my blue surgical mask in place before I even left my car. Two women saw me enter the church and made me welcome. “Are you here for the blood drive?” The two wore painter’s masks with metal nose clips. That’s what the church gave donors who arrived without a mask. I introduced myself. “I am Wilbo. I have a Four Forty Five appointment.” The host put a thermometer in my mouth. No fever meant I could give.

Appointments might have been necessary, and yet the church welcomed walk-ins. I sat in the lobby, six feet from six people seated upon folded metal chairs. The donors dressed in work tee shirts. They represented a local construction company and the nearby Caterpillar plant. We all waited in silence, breathing through our masks, scrolling through our phones.

I waited for an hour. “Next appointment,” called the staffer. I missed that call. My appointment had passed an hour ago. A man who arrived after me turned and spoke to me. “You can go.”

I entered the fellowship hall. I saw empty donation beds. The attendants finished up the donations of the last two donors. A staffer checked my blood pressure, a good reading for me. She pricked my finger to test my iron. She made me answer a set of questions on a touch screen computer. We sat farther apart than usual and wore masks. Nothing new I can report but those two items.

Dan led me to a bed where he could draw blood from my left arm. The Red Cross had stopped using rubber squeeze balls. He gave me a piece of foam wrapped in a surgical glove to squeeze. I don’t think a man has ever drawn my blood before, but he did a good job. “Look away,” he recommended. I did and he inserted the needle. I felt little pain. I usually jump.

I have always filled up the bag fast. Today was no exception. “You took four minutes and fifty-one seconds.” “Is that a record?” “Sorry, one donor gave a pint in three minutes and seventeen seconds. Faster than that time and we can’t use the blood. Only an artery can give blood that fast. It’s bright red blood. We need to draw blood from a vein.” “The more you know,” I said as I hopped off the bed.

I stocked up on snacks, pretzels and chips and cookies. I picked up a few bottles of water. “We have chicken salad sandwiches in the fridge. Would you like one or two?” “I’m a vegan.” “You’re a vegan?” “I’m a vegan although you couldn’t tell from the snacks I picked up.” “It’s okay, we’re glad you donated.” I hand-santized at the door. I drove downtown.

I sat in the historical park downtown, Heritage Park. A mural celebrates the night when "The Thief of Bagdad" opened in Streator. The building in the mural has a cornerstone of 1920. It didn't look like the nearby Majestic Theater. Ray Paseka of nearby Mendota Illinois painted it. 

Douglas Fairbanks starred in the film based on the Arabian Nights. The producer released the “Thief of Bagdad” for March 18, 1924. The film didn’t make it to Streator until warmer weather. The men and women dressed in their evening attire didn’t seem cold at all. The smart looking set sipped at cocktails and laughed at jokes and looked relaxed. Did Paseka looked at old photographs for the faces of his men and women? One woman holds a pack of Lucky Strikes in her left hand.

I like the historical park. The landscape designer set a huge boulder in the center, encircled by old fashioned roses. The town pulled the boulder out of the clay pit when Streator Brick closed its doors. The glass factory donated molds for milk bottles from the last century. Embedded in the cement, the molds make a conversational piece. The coal mines closed decades ago. A family donated a pickax, a miner’s hat and a miner’s lamp. The town embedded those in cement also.

The Red Cross van drove west on Main Street, heading towards Peoria. I knew my donation rested in a refrigerator with all the pints from my neighbors. The pints resemble human hearts when full. 

I sat and watched the sun fade on the brick store fronts of downtown. A lozenge in white porcelain embedded in the brick wall displayed a book. I wondered if a bookstore sold books from the building. I imagined walking into the bookstore before the Thief of Bagdad screening. I asked the clerk for a copy of One Thousand and One Arabian nights. 

I have lived here for ninety nights, every night a story.