Giving Blood

Hello everybody :).

Yesterday I gave blood yayyy so I can feel all proud of myself now. The thing that was stopping me the most was fear of the unexpected so I'll fill you in on all the details!

Me, my sister , B, (who was turning 17 yesterday so finally allowed to do it), my boyfriend Steven, and his friend, Frazer, all went down yesterday. There was a desk at the front of the entrance with an angry looking women who barked to come back later in an appointment time. So after gorging on cakes, sandwiches and drinking lots of fluids like they tell you (what an excuse!) we came back.

First of all we had to fill out our details to make sure our blood was safe and then go into a private room to check through the answers. My boyfriend went first and got rejected as he'd had a tattoo in the past six months and I must admit a secret part of me was hoping I'd fail the little pin prick test to check if your haemoglobin (...or something...) levels were OK. How bad is that?! Finally it was my turn where I got interrogated by four nurses because I'd had a recent blood test but finally I was allowed. The prick itself hurt a little in your finger but it wasn't bad.

Waiting in the Que I really wanted to run out the door - especially when half way through Frazer's giving blood he turned white and his eyes rolled back in his head. He'd fainted before enough blood had been given so he had to have his discarded so all that worry was for nothing too! It was so scary watching it; all the nurses rushed over and made a massive fuss like an episode of E.R or something so I was getting more and more nervous.

"Don't worry, I've given blood sixteen times without problems" the woman in the seat next to me said since I was clearly eyeing up the exit door suspiciously. She did go on to tell me how both her brother and boyfriend fainted too though so I was still nervous. My sister who was already on one of the beds was having problems too as they couldn't find a vein, so it took so long I ended up having mine done before hers.

I had a problem with veins too; apparently both mine and my sisters were so thin it was hard to find a vein that was wider than the needle. The needle only hurt a little, but you can get a general anaesthetic if you don't want to feel it, but I didn't really see the point as you need a needle to put the general anaesthetic in anyway. After that it was fine apart from my blood pressure was so low I set off the alarm tons of time along with my sister. In the end my needle kept on having to get twisted and my sisters needed to be pressed in. I did feel a tiny bit dizzy but not much and all the other nurses bar the first one was lovely, and after she got our blood she was nice too EVENTUALLY haha. We got made to have some juice and a biscuit to get our blood feeling OK again, and even though we were both so exhausted we went to bed at half 8 it felt really good to have given blood. I was on such a high! I would do it again because other than the major nervousness the actual giving blood wasn't even bad.

I feel fine now the day after so I really would recommend it. Even Frazer who fainted wanted to give it another go and he was totally fine after some juice. You have to wait 4 months before you can give it again so it's not for a while now anyway. I'll add some more photos at the bottom to give you an idea of what its like which my sister took. Let me know if I've helped/influenced anyone in making their choice! x

Below: I took this photo this morning... if you look carefully you can see the pink on my wrist even though I got it done last night!

Above: What it looked like after the plaster was taking off - only a tiny pin prick.Above: a delightful photo of the needle in the community centre. The flooring is done for! Hehe.