Friday: blood donation

I gave blood today.  It was a bit of an ordeal.  I've been having problems lately and keep thinking I should stop, but at the same time I have time and willingness to do it.

Anyway, my iron was fine.  This has been a problem in the past but the iron supplements help.

I also have small veins.  I tried to drink plenty of water ahead of time to make the process better.  The initial poke went fine so I was optimistic.  However, my blood kept stopped coming out.  They finally got the needle in the right place and it started flowing again.  It happened one more time but I was almost done so they just held the needle *just so* and filled the bag.  Then they started filling the tubes that they need for the testing and it stopped again.  As they were fiddling with it the needle popped out.  (This didn't hurt at all.)  But I started pooling blood.  One nurse (I had two by me at the time) clamped down on my arm so fast.  I didn't get any blood on my clothes, we didn't get any on the blood pressure cuff, it was surprisingly clean.

They had to put another needle in the other arm, but it was a smaller needle so my small veins didn't matter as much.  They just barely got the minimum amount (two tubes) and the blood started flowing better so they were able to get all five tubes in the end.