I Survived!

Since I'm sure everyone is dying to know, yesterday's blood drive at KUEA was a big success. We had 31 people show up to donate with the successful collection of 23 units of blood. And guess what? Mine was one of them! I was very excited and relieved!

When I first sat down in the "draw" chair, I told the technician that the last time I'd tried to donate I'd failed to fill up my bag in time because I was apparently a slow bleeder. When she initially stuck me it didn't start flowing very quickly, and I was worried that the problems were starting already! My technician called over another person to help her, and with a little wiggling of the needle, they were able to get a reasonable stream going into my bag. About 11 minutes into my bloodletting, the tech came over and said "Uh oh, you've stopped." I told her I didn't want to stop, so she did a little more wiggling and the bag started filling up again. My pint made weight with 3 minutes to spare! :)

I did ask her about why they can't use a half pint or an almost pint of blood, and she said that there's already a certain amount of anti-coagulant in the bag before the collection starts, so if there isn't a full pint of blood in the bag, the ratio is off and the blood can't be used. Now it all makes perfect sense!

I was pretty impressed by the overall organization and efficiency of the event, which I think was put on by the Red Cross. The sign up was all done online, and on the website you could search for blood drives that would be in your area. However, the coolest thing they had was this new type of medical tape they used to hold your gauze pads in place after you're all done. It's like this stretchy fabric that's not even sticky, but it's got these little ridges that sort of hook onto each other sort of like Velcro--it's really cool! Of course, I'm clearly very easily entertained!