Blood

So today was the blood drive at our school. They were having an emergency blood drive because they didn't get their quota of donations for the year. So they came to our school almost two weeks ago and they were like "so anyone over the age of 17 and at least 110 pounds should sign up" and I was like "I JUST TURNED 17 YAY!" so I got to do it. I was really excited/nervous.

So fourth period today comes around and I'm walking to the gym to donate. Well, there's like five billion other people there, but I decided to wait for Laurel so we could do it together. She got down there and we registered officially. Then both of us were called into separate physical booths to get our iron, heartrate, and some other things tested. It was highly amusing that each new nurse always asked us "What is your name? Your phone number? Your last four SSN digits?" But anyways, we both passed and then were handed a fun questionaire that Laurel desrcibes in her post (I'm too lazy to add a link to her post, just go to her website, linked on my side panel).

After we turned in the questionaire we did some sort of interview check on our answers and then went to get apple juice. We had a nice conversation with the nice people serving the drinks and snacks. Apparently the people in the program thought pop was going to go faster than apple juice and cranberry juice. Well, they were over halfway through their apple juice by the time we got there.

So then we sat for like another period before Laurel finally got her needle in at the start of 6th period. I was hooked up shortly after. I was highly amused by the doctors and I kept asking questions about everything. I wanted to know why some people got three bags and if it was gonna hurt and stuff like that. So they got it in me really fast because I have huge veins that are easy to find. Laurel on the other hand had a lot of trouble with it. Again go to her blog if you wanna hear what happened to her.

So my blood took a whole long time to fill the tiny bag. Mine was smaller because I weighed in the middle weight range of 110-120. And yet Cara was hooked up after me and let go before me. Oh well, it happens.

So taking out my blood thing was a lot more interesting. They take it out funny, where they like push blood back into you and that felt really really weird and I didn't like it at all. But then when they were taking the actual needle out, I was like "So is this going to hurt" and well, it was already out and I was like "oh...*when did that happen?*". haha.

But then before they could wrap up my arm, they had to do some fancy close the bag thing, and the clamp on my bag fell off and my blood started coming out. I was in shock thinking "I just donated all that blood they better not lose it all", but in the end it was still okay and they didn't lose a sufficient amount.

So they get back to my arm. Well, it was all bruised up and swelling, which as I looked at it, I thought it was normal. But apparently it doesn't happen to many people. So they told me that since I bruise easily (they asked me), that I'll just need to ice it every couple of hours and then tomorrow leave a warm wet washcloth on it.

Well, after all that I get up and go get more apple juice and I was fine and all but then I get really dizzy. And I'm dizzy for the next period and a half until we decide that we should go to eighth period even though I'm dizzy because Laurel didn't want to miss Government and she wasn't dizzy. Well that soon changed when we started going up steps. She immediately got dizzy and we both just sat down at the top of the gym building.

Finally after a teacher gave us some very awful ultimatum, we got up and walked to chorus together, which was actually 9th period, not 8th, but we just waited for 8th to end and then we went into class.

Then you can pick up most of this from laurel....until marching band.

Marching band was awful. Trying to march holding an icepack and not passing out is something no one should ever attempt again. Just skip, it isn't worth it.

Work...that was just an awful experience. I couldn't grasp anything too well with my left hand and I was sooo dizzy. But the smoothie did help, so I have to thank Mark for that suggestion.

Can you tell I'm getting bored with this?
I'm done.