Which Arm?

Blood Donation Form Seems like each time I go back to the Blood Bank, they have a new form to fill out. Now, they fit you in a private little booth and when they draw the sample to test your iron, you get dragged into a closed door room.

They made an error and asked me to wait, but I told them that I had to be somewhere.


After a second, the lady comes back and tells me they can do my double donation in a second. I had 15.4 iron this time, down from 18+ last time.


New Blood MachineI noticed that they got a new machine. Sophia was laughing at me for Entering the Donor Informationtaking pictures of the machine. The interesting part is that no blood touches any part of the machine. Here it is all clean to the left.
At the right, she is entering all my information: 5'9" 180 pounds. Yes, I gained 5 pounds at Nationals. Not too bad :) I expected 10 but I'm not complaining. You can see my blood type there. Universal Donor.

Right Arm DonationThey got new squeezy things too. I'm getting better at taking pictures Blood Collectorwith my left hand and not looking through the viewfinder. In case you haven't noticed, cameras are right handed.


There was another guy smiling at me because he saw me taking a lot of photos. I actually have a little video somewhere when I did this several years ago. The blood looks really dark because there is very little plasma in it since it's all been taken out.

Karen and SophiaAtomic ClockKaren on the left - she did all the pre-work. And Sophia, the lady that did the sticking and all the other stuff on the machine.

I love that clock. The numbers are huge and it's an atomic clock.

The lights above it are attached to a button in the bathroom. If they light then someone pressed the emergency button. The red one is for the women, and the other one is the mens.

At the end, they laughed at me because I was told to apply pressure to the insertion point with my left hand and raise my right arm up. Sophia then said, "Let's see you try to take a picture now!" That's so messed up, even the guy started laughing!

They depleted my supply down to 35%, so I can't go back for another four months.

3 comments:

Kate said...

Sam-
I lurk often, but don't comment much. Congratulations on being a donor! They won't take my blood, 'cause I lived in England during the mid-80's. Guess I'm a Mad Cow. And yes, I recently discovered that taking aphoto left-handed is really hard! LOL

Anonymous said...

I knew it! Those "lurkers." LOL. Thanks for stopping by, Kate.

Arlene said...

Good for you for giving blood! I can't give blood, due to my kidney issues :-( Looking at all those scary machines though, I may not be able to anyway!!