Apologies to my parents for this one.

It was my freshman year in college, and I had to get a job in order to contribute to my tuition. I had chosen an out-of-state school —the University of Wisconsin Madison —which was a relatively mean thing to do, because I could have gone to the University of Illinois and saved everyone a whole lot of money. But I don’t regret the decision at all and I was happy to work in order to attend the school of my choice. Except, that last part is a lie. I didn’t want to work! I wanted to make friends, meet boys, and go to parties.

I got a job in one of the school’s cafeterias. It was horrible. Everything smelled like wet mushrooms covered in dog hair. I had to wear a red jacket and possibly a hat (I have blocked this part out.) Two of my bosses kept hitting on me, and washing the dishes was very much like what I imagine falling into a dumpster would entail.

It’s not that I was lazy. I worked throughout high school: at an ice cream shop, a clothing store, a bakery. I babysat, and fed my neighbors’ cats. But the cafeteria just wasn’t working for me. I hated seeing my classmates and feeling like I was somehow different from them because of the red hat I may or may not have been wearing. I quit after one semester, but I still needed to make money.

No, I did not become a drug dealer.

I was 17 when I started college, and you had to be 18 to donate plasma at the campus collection center. I very much wanted to donate, not so much because it was a generous thing to do, but because it actually paid fairly well. So once my birthday rolled around, I signed up.

We were allowed to participate twice a week, and all it involved was reclining in a powder blue vinyl chair and either studying or watching a movie while a technician inserted an IV in your arm, drew out blood, separated the golden plasma, and then cycled the blood back in. I wasn’t afraid of needles, and I always watched when they stuck one in my vein. I think it was kind of a challenge to myself, to witness this vampiric activity as evidence of my inability to retain an actual job.

After about an hour, the process was over and I collected a check, which I immediately took to a nearby convenience store to cash. You had to buy something in order to cash the check, and I often bought a pack of Marlboro lights, because I used to smoke and it’s gross and no one should ever do it.

Meanwhile, back at the dorm, I had befriended a group of boys on the floor below mine. They were 1990s hippie pot smokers who listened exclusively to the Grateful Dead and Phish and therefore reminded me of the boys I had hung out with in high school. Hey guys.

The college boys were all from Wisconsin. Tom was an artist who specialized in spray paint alien landscapes, all brick red craters and multicolored moons. To this day, I have never seen better handwriting than his. Ajay, his roommate, was very overweight and it made him mean. I saw him years later on campus, at least 100 pounds thinner with a smile on his face that was sweet and unfamiliar. Chris was somewhat of a surprise, a brilliant bearded 18-year-old who enjoyed ironing his own clothes and would often iron mine, as well. Drew was my crush. A former high school wrestler with big brown eyes and a conspicuous Midwestern accent, he wanted to be a marine biologist, and I was not the only freshman girl whose eye he caught. “Get in line,” Tom told me, not unkindly.

We spent a lot of time in Tom and Ajay’s room, engaging in those activities I mentioned above. Don’t get the wrong idea, these were nice respectful boys and this is not a story about inappropriate touching.

Sometimes a few of us would go give plasma together, turn that saffron serum into cash, and head back to the dorm. One day, I had forgotten to eat. I don’t know how it happened, I love eating. But there I was, fresh from “work” and positively anemic. Sitting in a chair in Tom and Ajay’s room, I took one hit from a colorful glass pipe, and instantly knew I was in trouble. I got up, muttering something about being right back, and headed to the stairwell where I passed out on the floor.

I don’t think I was unconscious for very long, and I slowly dragged myself up two flights, opening the door to my own floor and immediately passing out again. I made it almost to my room, passed out again, and finally toddled up and pushed open my door.

Upon entering the room, I found my sophomore roommate watching TV with her generally reserved friend Tess who had once shocked me by detailing her Brett Favre sex dreams, but about whom I otherwise had little opinion. I’m sure that after this experience, however, she established an opinion of me.

I passed out in front of them, woke up and climbed into my bed, which was lofted and therefore required a ladder, and I’m frankly not entirely certain how I managed to get up it, but I am 100% sure it was not glamorous. I remained bedridden for the rest of that day and the next, and the boys came to check on me a few times because I think they thought they had killed me, even though it wasn’t their fault that I couldn’t have eaten a bagel before I was willingly phlebotomized.

I thought about this story in 2012, before my diagnosis was final, when I was being treated five days a month with the plasma of strangers in a process called IVIG. The hope was that all of those foreign antibodies would flush my symptoms away, restoring me to the responsible non-smoking adult I had become.

It didn’t work. IVIG is not a treatment for ALS, and ALS is probably not a punishment for my past transgressions and stupid choices. Still, sometimes I wonder about the connection, or at least marvel at the idea of coming full circle, giving something of yourself and then potentially benefiting from that very same thing. Imagine the poetry if it had worked, the story we could tell if plasma had been the answer.

I stopped donating. I got a summer job back in Chicago, and worked three jobs once school started again. I’ve lost track of all those college boys, but I remember them fondly and wish them well. They did treat me like gold.

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