What does it mean when you're no longer an A+?
By Amanda Serenyi
From age four, when Mom began nursing school, whenever she saw the tops of my bare feet or the inside of my arms where my skin was nearly translucent and the blue veins running underneath looked like inky branches in a milky sky, she’d say something like, “Those veins! I’d love to practice starting an IV on you.” She might as well have asked to amputate my foot. The thought of needles piercing my skin made me involuntarily curl into a ball and turn my hands into a living turtleneck to protect my exposed neck and inner elbows.
Mom and Dad gave blood routinely when I was little. I would go with them to the blood bank, first as a family, then individually with each after the divorce. Inevitably, I would be the one lying down on one of those sky-blue leather recliners with orange juice and a cookie offered to me, to prevent me, the person who was not giving blood, from passing out. I’d love to say it was all a ploy for free cookies and juice, but I wasn’t talented enough to fake draining all the color from my own face.
What I remembered from those blood bank visits was that both of my parents were blood type A+. Thinking in report-card-terms, it didn’t get any better than that.
In seventh grade biology, our teacher, Mr. Hayes, required all students to poke a finger and type their blood in order to get an A in the class. My grade depended on the needle prick, so I relented, but was too afraid of the tears that would flow in front of my classmates to do it during regular hours. I was the know-it-all in class who aced every assignment and test. Showing a weakness was not an option.
Mom came in after school to help restrain and calm me. While I panted with my eyes squeezed shut, she held my hand down while Mr. Hayes stabbed my index finger. I felt Mom tip my finger over onto a glass microscope slide. She put a band-aid over the puncture site while Mr. Hayes dropped a little solution on the blood confirming what logic already told me: My blood type was A. We didn’t test for the Rh factor (the + or -).
According to the Red Cross website, among Caucasians, like me, the most common blood type is O, with 37% O+ and 8% O-. The next most common blood type is A with 33% A+ and 7% A-. Type B is rare, with only 11% including + and -, and Type AB is only 4%. If I were Type A, then, given my parents’ types and the breakdown of + and -, the odds were overwhelmingly in my favor that I was A+. Perfect.
For our first married Valentine’s Day, I ordered a matching set of Road IDs for my husband Denis and me. They were a sporty, modern version of medical ID bracelets. Each small metal plate was threaded on a piece of Velcro, meant to loop through shoe laces. Mine included my name, address, Den’s name and phone number, and my blood type. It tickled me to see my new married name etched in metal, both on my own tag and as the emergency contact on his. Being an overachiever and former straight-A student, I also enjoyed seeing my blood type, A+, declared proudly.
As weekend warriors, we spent Sundays and warm evenings running and biking on the paved rails-to-trails paths near our home. We wore our amulets of safety to ward off catastrophe for a year or so before they found a new home in our entryway table, where they rattled amongst unlabeled keys, orphan batteries, and crossed-off to-do lists. The novelty of my new name and the protection our new union seemed to need had worn off.
Years later, when learned I was donor-conceived, I turned to 23andMe for any health- and ancestry-related answers I could find. After finding my biological father and half-brother, I reviewed the Health Tools section to see what else I could learn. My results indicated that my blood type was probably A, and my Rh factor was probably negative. I was probably A-. I tried not to think of this in terms of being 100% (A+ grade) vs. 92% (A- grade), but it was hard not to feel like something in my sense of self had loosened, lessened.
When my big toe swelled to the size of a lime after a competitive yoga class, my doctor had two concerns: a broken toe and gout. An x-ray was required to rule out a break. A blood test would rule out gout. My stomach somersaulted in dread. I turtled my limbs into the protection of the billowing dressing gown.
“Can you add blood typing on top of the gout test?” I asked my doctor.
“You know, the best way to determine your blood type is to donate blood,” he said.
“That’s not an option for me,” I said.
I begged.
He relented.
When my results arrived, I texted Mom: “Did you ever have my blood typed?”
“I’m pretty sure your blood was typed as a pre-op when you were little,” she wrote. “Not because it was needed, but just so I would know. You were the same type as me. A+.”
“I’m A-,” I wrote.
“Really? I don’t remember that,” she wrote. “Aunt Theresa is also A-.”
Oh, well, as long as someone else has the same blood type, then being wrong about it all these years is fine, my inner snark snarled, still miffed that my donor-conception had been kept from me for 33 years.
“I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if someone told me you were A-,” she wrote. “I wonder if it was typed wrong in the past? Didn’t you give blood once?”
“No,” I wrote. “Too afraid of needles.” How could she not know this about me after all these years?
It’s such a minor detail, one’s blood type, until it isn’t. It’s doesn’t affect me on a daily basis, but it’s part of me. The most frustrating part is it’s one more thing that I thought was one way before I found out I was donor-conceived, but now is something else. Just like “I used to be Irish-Italian” back when I thought I was related to my great-grandfather born in Dublin and great-grandmother born along the Italian/Swiss border. That Irish-Italian half has been replaced by a Jewish half. What else have I been mistaken about all these years?
After Mom involuntarily told me I was donor-conceived, I was frustrated at not knowing half of my genes, my family, and myself. She asked, “Why does it matter? Nothing has really changed. You are who you are.” That attitude works if you really know who you are and are comfortable with who that person is. It’s easy to shrug off minor pebbles tossed at your armor. Finding out I was donor-conceived stripped away any defenses I thought I had. My raw flesh was exposed and every minor pebble thrown my way felt like a flaming cannonball.
I’m grateful to have never needed to know my blood type for an emergency. I’m grateful to have never had to rely on the Road IDs since mine wasn’t accurate anyway. There will come a time when I will need to have key information about myself, or Denis will need to have it. I just hope when that day comes, I will have finished piecing together the mysterious parts of me. Until I feel whole and fully knowledgeable about myself again, I’ll keep searching for the little clues that help define me from the inside out. A- wasn’t a death sentence. It just meant there was room for improvement.
Amanda Serenyi lives with her husband and dog in San Francisco. She’s working on a memoir, “Family of Strangers,” about rediscovering notions of family after learning at age 33 she was donor conceived. Learn more about her at at her website.
