Panic! At the dry cleaners

A scary thing happened to me today.

When class was over I went to donate blood, as I do whenever I get the opportunity, and as I have done over 30 times before. I patiently sat through the speech about what to do and what not to do for 24 hours after donating, scoffed to myself about the Red Cross volunteer's concern about whether I was okay before letting me get up from the table. I'm a pro, leave me alone.

When that was over I went home to do the laundry I had been ignoring for the past 5 weeks. As I struggled under the weight of my laundry bag I laughed to myself, "So much for not doing any heavy lifting after giving blood!"

I put in my laundry and went to run some quick errands. I stopped to pick up something for lunch, and then went to collect all the dry cleaning I had similarly been ignoring for weeks. My dry cleaners had just gone through some renovations, and it took an EPICALLY (is that a word? I don't care) long time for the woman to find my clothes. I waited. And waited.

As I was waiting, I thought I started to feel a little light headed. I told myself I was imagining things, so I took some deep breaths and ignored it. And then I really couldn't ignore it anymore. It suddenly seemed as though all the energy had been sucked out of me, and I was pretty positive I was going to faint. Or throw up. Or both, simultaneously. It seemed like an eternity standing there waiting for what should have been a 30 second dry cleaners run to be over. My vision was blurry and my mind went totally fuzzy. The woman handed me something, and I just stared at the object for about 10 seconds. I had no idea what it was. I recognized that there were some weird numbers on it and something about it looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't know why she had given it to me. After awhile I realized it was my credit card.

When I finally left, the cold air made me feel a little better. As I walked home, the weight of my dry cleaning became less like a few sweaters and more like a few boulders. Though there are only 2 flights of stairs to my apartment, I had to stop halfway up the first because I didn't have the strength to keep going. I made myself press on, and again I was pretty sure I was about to lose consciousness.

When I got to my apartment, I threw everything on the ground instead of taking off my shoes, hanging out my coat, and carefully sorting out my things as I normally would. I lay on my bed, sweating my ass off but too weak to even take off my coat. After a few minutes I started to feel better, and I made myself drink some water and pick at my lunch, which had gotten totally smushed from me tossing my bag on the floor.

And now? I feel wonderful. I have no idea what happened or if it was even related to me giving blood today. However, just as a precaution I will probably try to separate blood drive day and laundry day in the future. Just in case.