This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 SLIDELL, La. - Tuesdays she asked for the needle in her left arm, and one afternoon in late April, Christina Seal, 41, arrived at the clinic after work. The parking lot was almost full, as usual. She had been giving plasma for nearly six months, and she had a routine locked in place. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Two Sam's Club protein shakes and an iron supplement a day to keep herself serviceable. Afterward, vitamin E oil on her skin to prevent needle scars. The routine had helped tame into normalcy what at first had felt so bizarre. "I never thought I would be in a position where I would have to sell my plasma to feed my children," she would say later. This was where inflation had driven Seal. A month earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had announced that prices had risen 8.5% over the past year, the largest annual jump since December 1981. Fuel, food and housing costs … [Read more...] about A Louisiana teacher seeks to survive inflation, one plasma donation at a time