Give Life to your community! I Did!!

Our company is large enough here that we have the Community Blood Center come to us.

I’ve never given blood.  I’m scared to death of needles.  I bruise every time I get poked with a needle for whatever they are doing… So I just stay clear of needles…

However…

With the recent tornado that hit, a lot of blood was lost.  Plus, I put on my 101 list to donate blood, so when is the best time to do that… Now.

I called the hubby, told him what I was doing and asked if he’d go with me.  He said he would so we signed up, actually I signed him up, and we went to donate blood.  This is the first time he’s been able to because of different reasons. (getting shots for his detour, surgeries, etc… see nothing bad… LOL)

So we walked over and signed our life away, ok just kidding.  We read the papers, filled out more papers, got pricked in the finger to make sure we weren’t anemic, had our blood pressure taken, temperature taken, had to tell our weight, then it was time to drink water and wait.

The lady who did mine was great.  I tell anyone coming at me with a needle, You have one chance to get it in or else you’ll have a Nicole sized hole to fix in that wall b/c I’m outta here.  So far, knock on wood, I have good veins so they hit them every time.  She asked if it should come out of the right or left arm but because I’ve never donated she said she was going to feel around on my arm to see which had better veins.  She finally decided on my left arm so she had to flip my chair around and I got to stare at the wall.  She told me I had been bad… LOL.

She took another lady at the same time so I let her do that lady first.  That lady had actually given 1gallon so she got a lapel pin.  Just about the time she started to hook me up, the other lady was about done so she told me it would be pointless to hook me up and leave me hanging so she was going to wait a minute.  I told her that was fine, it would give me a minute to run to the bathroom.  Hubby saw me leave and was afraid I was sick or something.  I came back and he said, bathroom.  I smiled and said yup :).  Anyway once she was done with her she started on me.

She got in my arm and vein on the first prick… go her!  I was doing good.  I’m one I can look at needles, they don’t scare me.  I’ve had an IV twice and looked at it… doesn’t bother me.  Blood doesn’t affect me either (unlike my uncle who it drops him to his knees and he’s married to the doctor).  So I looked over at my arm but instead of looking at it, I looked down and saw the blood bag rock.  I found it odd that everytime I squeezed it rocked… I couldn’t figure out if I was doing it or if it was on a motor.

Anyway the lady looks at me and asks if I’m ok and I replied mmmmhmmmmm.  She said that doesn’t sound convincing, are you sure you’re ok?  I replied… um… yeah but is it hot in here?  She was like I”m laying you down.  Well me I was scared to lay down, and I know they do this all the time but it weirded me out thinking that would be bad, but I felt much much better after she laid me down.  However it took me a while to get my bearings back to even sit up in a full sitting position.  Plus I haven’t had pop since April 10, 2011 and they said to PC to get sugar in me so he filled me full of Coke.  He brought it over and said, shut up and drink this.  Boy it tasted weird.  Then I ate 2 oreo’s and left for lunch. 🙂  End of story… LOL.  Oddly enough the Sugar really did help which surprises me, but what do I know… LOL.

I was however sick feeling most of the rest of the day.  A friend told me to go home and eat a steak as rare as I could handle it and it’d make me feel better.  Sure enough, it did.

So now I get to cross off number 7 – Donate Blood off my list 🙂

I’ve been asked if I’d do it again, well I haven’t completely nixed it… yet 😉