Blood Donation

Went to the blood donation drive at PS during lunch time with my colleagues CH and WK. CH was not eligible to be a donor because he had taken flu tablets the day before, and to think he was the one who initiated coming here to donate blood.

So after all the filling up of the questionnaire, the interrogation by the medic, and the blood tests, it was time to extract blood. Even though this is not my first time at it, I still felt nervous. I mean, check out that needle that is piercing one of my arteries.

There it goes!

So my blood made its way from my arm to a little bag, but after some time, the attendant began to frown. "Your blood flows very slow huh," she said. I could not believe it, because the previous time I donated blood, the blood bag was filled within three minutes. I explained that it might be because of the sugary drinks that I have taken before I came here, and she intoned seriously "No, I think your blood has clotted." I went aghast at the thought of jellied blood wobbling inside me, and the attendant quickly said, "Oh, no lah, I mean your blood clotted inside the needle lah." Chey.

After a gruelling fifteen minutes with the offensive needle under my skin and many tiring arm exercises that I have to do (to stimulate blood flow), the attendant decided not to wait for the blood bag to be full. I realised my blood flow practically stopped. When I asked if the three-quarter full bag of blood is sufficient, she said, "Okay lah, enough for baby".

Some joker came over to take pictures of the donors (which they can collect the free prints after the donation), and I wasn't feeling the best.

Another attendant came over and bandaged my arm with some very rough and sticky bandage, and he asked what colour I wanted. Trying to be difficult, I said purple, thinking he would not have such a colour. To my surprise he whipped out a lavender coloured bandage! WK was pissed because he was not even given the choice and got slapped with a neon green one.

Then we had free drinks (Milo!) and biscuits at their resting booth while we waited for our prints.

WK, me and CH

When we left the blood donation booth, I was about to pull them along for shopping when CH sternly reminded us that we had the boldness to take three hours to donate blood (and during office hours!). Spoiler.

The ugly bruise