Monday, 10 April 2006

My blood donation days are over and I'm currently nursing a very nasty purple bruise on the inside of my elbow.

Went to donate blood on Friday and it turned out to be one of the most horrible experience I've ever had.

I should have suspected something when the nurse took forever to find the vein in my arm and hesitated time and again to put the needle into it. (I've donated blood countless times before and never had such problems.)

When she finally did, the needle felt sharper than before and the pain never left. The bag took longer than usual to fill and when urged by another nurse to squeeze my hand, I felt an unusually sharp prick where the needle was embedded.

The nurse finally gave up and stopped the process halfway, by which time my heart rate started increasing and breathing soon became difficult. It didn't take long before I started seeing bright lights. When the needle was removed from my arm, I continued to feel pain and when I eventually looked at my arm, it was all swollen and bruised. Not normal at all.

Turns out the nurse had somehow placed the needle in my arm wrongly and it resulted in blood flowing underneath my skin instead of up the needle into the bag.

Add to that the fact that it was the second consecutive time I nearly passed out after donating blood, the doctor felt it would be better if he banned me from donating blood in the future.

Time to seek another method of saving lives I guess.

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2 comments:

Faith said...

OH MY GOSH!

Ow....

u can save lives by... waiting by the street to help little ladies cross?

Ida said...

That is scary! How are you feeling now?

I'm trying to figure out what you could do instead to save lives.

The only thing I can think of is donating bone marrow but that includes needles as well and hurts way more than donating blood does. Or so I've heard. So you can skip that one.

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