Blood Donor

It's not as scary as i thought. 

One of my resolution in upcoming 2011 was to donor my blood. It�s cool and pretty scary so I think it should be on my New Year resolution list. After months I�ve forgotten my goal until I had a chat with one of my student, she�s an active student who involves herself at the red cross. She deals with blood donor too in her school. Most important thing she has been an active blood donor for more almost a year.

I�ve heard from her that donor our blood is good. So then on the 16^th October I went to the red cross donor unit, I was rejected. My blood hemoglobin was under the minimum requirement 12.5; mine was 12.3. Shoot! 0.02 and I couldn�t donor my blood? Well I was already nervous at that time. I plan to return the next week.  So as the previous visit I filled in the form, mine was blue � it�s for the new blood donor, blue is for the �official� donor. Next I went for a first medical check-up, to find out if I had enough blood to be sucked up by the machine later :P. At that time my HB was 13.4. I passed!! I passed the minimum requirement of 12.5

Then I went to a small room where I met a doctor to check my blood pressure and had a short interview about my medical background. Basically I was OK till she said that my blood pressure was quite high, 150. What the??? The normal one is 110 � 120 and I got what? I should have been dizzy if I reached that number. However I passed.  Then the officer at the registration room gave me my first ever donor card, with my name on it and my register number.

Officially a blood donor! Yeah!!

Then the time finally came. I went to the room where I could see many special chair was seated the donor. Before that I had to wash my hand till it reached my elbow. Dried it. Gave the white form and my new blood donor card to the officer and then she seated me on the chair. I tried to sit and then lay as relax as possible. Then a nurse came and brought all of her needle things stuff. I heard the metal clanging in a small metal box with her. She asked me to make a fist, then found my nerve, then stick a big point syringe and ouch..i could see my blood was running down through a plastic pipe. My blood!!! Finally.

After 10 � 15 min she pull it off from my hands, then the nurse gave me a box of bread with salted duck egg, and a small box of chocolate milk. They also gave me merchandise. I went home in a bigsmile. I did it!!! And next donor time is on 29 January 2012. Here I come!!!!!!