Yesterday morning I did do my usual exercises, but I didn’t last night. During my lunch break, I went here:
I donated blood for the first time. This was something I have wanted to do for a long time, but I’ve been below the weight limit for most of my adult life, except when I was pregnant. At my last physical, I realized I was finally slightly over the limit and discussed it with my doctor. She said the need for blood donations now is greater than usual, due to the pandemic. So, after leaving the doctor’s office, I called the Red Cross from my car and finally made an appointment. Yesterday, I kept the appointment.
I had no idea what I was getting into, but many people do it on a regular basis and it saves lives. That’s good enough for me. Though I played the cool cucumber, the intake nurse noted my pulse was slightly elevated. I confessed I’d never donated before. She pricked my finger to check my ability to clot, and assured me, “That’s usually the most painful portion of it! You’ll do fine.”
A gentleman set me up for the actual blood draw. Their needle was no different from the kind used for blood draws for a physical. The time period was longer, and a nurse gave me a “gummy” toy car, enclosed in a glove, to squeeze. R&B played inside the Red Cross van; I watched in amusement as one nurse, the gentleman who set me up, grooved to the music.
I resisted the urge to make vampire jokes.
My husband did receive vampire jokes from me prior, and responded with fainting jokes. He donated blood before, and knows exactly what not to say. And I knew when to stop paying attention to his texts.
I think of the blood donation in the same manner as a kumite match, or karate fight. It will weaken you, but it is also a learning experience that, in the long term, it can make you stronger.
Perhaps, in the case of a blood donation, it is more about mental strength than physical, at least for me. Once the blood draw had actually finished, I was feeling good, and then I saw the bag of blood and thought, “That came from me?” I immediately felt a bit dizzy, then I thought to myself, “Well this is silly–one or two minutes ago, most of that blood had already left my body and I did not feel this way. I feel this way because I looked at that bag. That bag is a good thing–and I am just fine.” The nurse told me when to sit up and I waited to sit up until I was told, and I felt just fine.
I did have the orange juice, and an entire bottle of water. I thought about taking some of the treats, but had brought fruit and nuts in the car, for the specific reason of not needing to take any sweets.
Once the draw is done, you wait for fifteen minutes to make sure you are okay. The nurse who released me instructed me not to exercise for 24 hours, or drink alcohol. So that was it for both my evening and morning exercises, along with that evening glass of wine.
Today, however, the kids and I met Sensei in the Figure 8 Park for a work-out. He had us do two minute runs broken up with kata and exercises. We one set of 20 push-ups, sit-ups and squats. For kata, we first practiced three of the pinans. Roughly in the middle of the workout, we did the sokugis, or the first punching katas. We ended the workout with Gekisai Dai and Sho, and Sensei led. After a couple runs, we simply drank water and socialized.
During the kata drills, Sensei also had us pay attention to how much distance we need for social distancing during the pandemic: he recommends thirty feet, outdoors, when folks are exercising. He instructed S to count it out for himself, since S, who is quite tall, also has large feet.
Tonight, I am teaching and hope to run the IFK upper 17 moves after kihon. I will ask my kohai and co-teacher to run kihon. We will use this video after the break: