Rant #2,940: Bad Blood

I’m back!
 
My allergies are terrible today.
 
I can barely see out of each eye,
 
But at least I know that I am relatively healthy, as my battery of doctor appointments is just about over.
 
I went to the eye doctor on Saturday, my regular doctor on Monday, and my dermatologist on Tuesday, and it appears that I have passed all the tests with flying colors.
 
That is true, but one thing still has to be done, and I have to go back to my regular doctor later today.
 
While taking blood from me on Monday, the stream inexplicably stopped right in the middle of its flow, and after poking me around to see where else they could extract the remainder of the blood that they needed to fill the vials—I filled two of four before the stoppage—they told me to come back today, where, hopefully, I will give them what they need.
 
I have had blood taken from me hundreds of times, including a donation that could not be used because I am on allergy medication, and the blood is considered tainted when that is in your system.
 
To my recollection, this is just the second time that the flow has stopped in the middle … I seem to remember it happening about 20 years ago, but that was it until the other day.
 
So I guess if Barnabas Collins picked me for a victim, he would immediately throw me away, because he couldn’t get any of the red stuff out of me, or at least he couldn’t get anything out of me this past Monday.
 
We will see today what happens.
 
They told me to fully hydrate myself, which I will do in the interim.
 
The funny thing about it is that the original flow came from my right arm, and when that stopped, it really stopped, as I wasn’t even bleeding when I was disattached from the vial.
 
And when they tried my left arm, nothing came out, but slightly after I was disattached, I noticed that a drop of blood came out under the Band Aid that they gave me, which leads me to believe that if they were a little more patient, they could have gotten what they needed.
 
Now all of this leads me to the next portion of this Rant, and please, do not get offended, but I am asking questions that need to be asked.
 
When the AIDS epidemic came about decades ago, many heterosexuals ended up getting the disease not through sexual contact, but through blood transfusions with blood from gay men who had unwittingly contracted the disease.
 
When this was discovered, blood donations from gay men were stopped for a long time, so as not to spread the disease to the general population, which, of course, it spread to, anyway, through other means.
 
Now, with monkeypox ravaging the gay demographic, do we again ban blood donations by gay men?
 
Again, I am asking the question because I am not knowledgeable about monkeypox, which we know can be controlled with an already-available vaccine.
 
But the fact of the matter is that while monkeypox is not AIDS—which was a death sentence to many gays and non-gays way back when—it is still something that we do not want spreading to the general population.
 
So do we ban, at least until monkeypox is more under control, blood donations from gay men?
 
I have heard on some of the television newscasts that have interviewed gay men about precautions that they are taking to protect themselves that … well, they aren’t taking any precautions at all, while others have rushed to get the shot, so with this sort of 50-percent ambivalence, how soon will monkeypox be in the general population through sexual contact and other means?
 
Just asking … as they say on Facebook, “just asking for a friend.”
 
And with all the shots we need to get now to protect ourselves against various diseases, will we all be asked to take a monkeypox shot?
 
And you just know how that is going to fly with a population that is sick of being told to get one shot after another after another.
 
But getting back to blood, if you desire to see real/fake blood being shed on television, just watch AEW Wrestling tonight on TBS at 8 p.m., because they have a barbed wire match planned, and you just know that the red stuff—is it blood or ketchup?—will be flowing on that show during that match.
 
Over the years, I have seen matches where wrestlers really did get “busted open,” as they say, and I have also seen matches where the blood is as fake as a $3 bill, so tonight’s match will probably be a mix of the two.
 
Yes, there will be plenty of bad blood that will be seen tonight … and I just hope that my blood is good enough to flow, flow and flow some more earlier in the day.
 
Got blood? Hopefully, I have plenty.