Blood Drive

There was a blood drive at my school today, and I decided to try it. This was the second blood drive I tried and would have been the first I actually donated in. The first blood drive was a no-go because I was anemic (my red blood cell count was too low). It wasn’t too serious for anemia, but the levels were low enough to where I was not allowed to donate.

For this blood drive, my red blood cell count was up (yay! no more anemia!) and so I was ready for the legit 16g needle to be shoved into my arm. My veins had another plan. The vein that they wanted to puncture decided to act like the Italian army (Axis Powers Hetalia reference), and they saw the needle as the British army. It ran away from the blood drive people and hid.

Normally I am terrible around any sort of puncture to myself to get my blood. I’ve been squeamish for a long time, even when I was in the fourth grade and had to get blood tests done. Crazy story but all in all I freaked out and didn’t want them stabbing my arm. During my sophomore year (the last school year) I was fine when my biology class did a blood typing lab. This year, in Medical Science I, I wasn’t doing so well. During the training we had to go through before we could work with blood at all, I had this nasty nauseating feeling and ended up puking in a trash can (which has become the new joke between my friends). For the first blood lab we did, I was a bit squeamish but was able to participate in the lab. The second lab was a blood typing lab like last year, and I was perfectly fine. When the blood drive people punctured the needle into my arm, I started to feel nauseous. It wasn’t as bad as when I puked in the trash can, but I was nervous that I might end up getting sick, so I asked them not to stick me again and they didn’t. So hopefully during the next blood drive I am well both internally and mentally to donate…. even though only two people can safely receive my blood.