How to Fail at Being Finnish: A Diary #4

A visit to the legalised vampires

Welcome to my ongoing record of life as a Brit in Finland. Each week I write about the things that colour my days and the, occasionally weird, ways this country keeps surprising me.

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Wil

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MONDAY

It’s dark by the time my wife gets home. Though, having said that, it’s December in Finland, it’s dark anytime anyone does anything this time of year.

“Where have you been?” I ask her.

She gives me that look, the kind of look that suggests I don’t remember anything she ever tells me.

“You just don’t remember anything I ever tell you, do you?” she says.

What can I say, it’s been 8 years of blissful marriage, I know her disappointed looks.

“Oh, yeah. You had that… thing today, didn’t you?” I say, convincingly.

“Blood donation.”

Of course, yes, she had mentioned it. But it isn’t a surprise. She’s been doing it for years. Blood donating is one of the many ways my wife is a good and selfless person. It’s thanks to her, in fact, that I go to all that bother of putting the correct recycling in the many recycling bins we have outside our apartment building.

Yes, it’s thanks to her I’m a good person as well.

“I should really do that myself though, shouldn’t I,” I say.

“Right,” she says, the “i” drawn out in a way that suggests I’m not being taken seriously.

“What?” I say, rightfully indignant.

“You’re too afraid they’ll tell you you have some tropical disease you’ve learnt about in some weird corner of self-diagnosis Google.”

“How very dare you?” I say, the levels of indignation almost too much to bear. “Just you wait.”

She walks away toward the living room, stunned to silence by the power of my conviction.

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WEDNESDAY

Maybe I am too afraid to do this.

I’m terrified of doctors, of nurses, home blood pressure tests, all of it. I’m even a little suspicious of my watch that tells me how badly I’ve been sleeping. What the hell is heart rate variability anyway? Should I be worried about it? Is it indicative of an oncoming heart attack?

Do you ever look at your X-ray at the dentist and marvel at the skull sitting millimetres below that fleshy sack it’s wrapped in? Not me. No way. Some people don’t like eating meat on the bone because it makes their food look too much like it used to be an animal. I have a similar relationship with X-rays. Anything below my skin, I don’t want to know about it.

That’s why I turn my head, wait until the dentist tells me everything looks alright or I need to floss more often, and I’m out of there.

I walk up to the desk of the Veripalvelu, the Finnish blood service. There is a bell but I choose to stand and wait instead because what kind of maniac actually ever rings a bell? Fast-travel route to being hated, for sure, and this is not the place for that.

A young woman with blonde hair appears and says “moi”. She is wearing blue scrubs.

“Moi. Umm… puhutko englantia?” I ask.

“We can speak English, yes,” she replies.

“Well, I have an appointment to give blood actually.”

“OK. Wait please.”.

A few moments pass. Just enough for the silence to give me space to ask the question I’ve been fantasising about asking since I first committed to doing this on Tuesday morning.

And, just as I open my mouth, she interrupts:

“Person number.”

I close my mouth, my question retreats, and I open it again with the answer she is looking for.

After a few beats she says my surname in Finnish, which sounds a lot like if you or I said the first 3 syllables of radiator.

“That’s me.”

“Yes. Complete this and then we take you through.” She hands me a questionnaire. A quick glance shows precisely the kinds of thing I’d have expected if I’d been expecting anything. Questions about my drug taking, love making, steroid pumping. No surprises.

I turn away, then stop, and turn back again. This is my chance…

“Umm… how much do they take, during a donation?”

I’ve been looking forward to this.

She smiles. “It’s 4.5 decilitres. That’s very standard.”

“As much as that… you know, it’s nearly an armful.”

…

…

Nothing. She isn’t laughing at all. Not even her smile remains.

Heartbroken, I take the form, a little red pencil, and sit down across from her desk to fill it in.

*

As I proudly report via questionnaire as to how few noxious substances/sexual partners I currently submit my body to, I wallow in the satisfaction of what I’m doing.

One, I’m not letting my health anxiety stop me from acting on the trace amounts of altruism I manifest, and two, I’m not assuming I’m about to be rejected due to some hidden disease that’s been brewing inside me without my knowing it.

When I return my form to the nurse, I’ve never been more certain that, with my forties approaching, I might just be closing in on that version of myself I have always wanted to be.

I am not afraid.

*

A few moments later, the nurse approaches. My form in hand.

There is something wrong.

My guts feel like a jar of over-fermented cucumbers has been popped open inside them.

They haven’t even taken blood yet, how could they know if there’s something wrong with me?

“Mr Radiator.”

“Yes.” My voice cracking.

“You were born in UK?”

Being British isn’t life-threatening. I would definitely have heard about that if it were.

“Yes,” I tell her, moderately relieved.

“I’m sorry but you can not donate.”

Can’t give blood? Just because of my good, old-fashioned British blood? The blood of Shakespeare. Cheddar cheese. Beans on toast. Marmite for god’s sake. Here I am, university-educated I might add, offering a pint of Britain’s finest and the Finns aren’t interested? If this is to do with Brexit I’m writing a letter to my Member of Parliament.

“Because I’m English?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry. No, not because you’re English. Because you lived there. Actually, the fact you lived there between ‘80 and ‘96. I’m sorry if this is a surprise. This rule is in place due to the mad cow disease.”

“My father’s Scottish.”

“I don’t think that makes a difference,” she says.

“And that’s permanent? I’ve not heard about mad cow disease in years. It’s still a thing?”

“Well,” she says. “The guidance is it’s because the disease can take decades to present. I’m very sorry.”

And with that, she leaves.

*

On the way home it repeats in my head.

“Decades to present.”

Decades.

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THURSDAY

“I forgot about your blood donation. How was it?” my wife asks in the darkness of our bedroom in the dark of the Finnish night in the dark of this cruel dark world.

“I didn’t get it in the end.”

“Oh, Wil.”

“They didn’t even let me.”

“Why?” I hear her sit up.

“Mad cow disease.”

“What?”

“British blood is too risky.”

She lies back down.

…

“You’re afraid of having mad cow disease now, aren’t you?”

After a day researching the incubation period, symptoms, prions and case rates, I tell her: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I close my eyes.

Sleep will find me eventually. When it comes, I will be clinging to the consolation that I always did prefer McChicken sandwiches as a boy, and that, so passionately did I dislike my mother’s roast beef, I rarely ate it anyway.

The diary continues next week…

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