The diverse Life

Lunch with a vampire

An unusual lunch time for me, instead of heading out to feed myself first, I went out to feed others instead - with a little deposit into the blood bank.

Blood donation, you either do it or you don’t. Those who do it do it for a variety of reasons - feel good factor, another time to socialise, the chance to lie beside a pretty woman (different bed of course!), some time off work, peer pressure etc. Some even does it for monetary benefits! Those who don’t do it also carry with them a list of reasons - fear of needle, fear of seeing blood, fear of pain from the needle, fear of seeing people you don’t want to see, or just can’t be bothered.

Whatever reasons you have, there are plenty of others just like you. And when I arrived at the blood donation centre, I’m actually surprised by the response. There were plenty of people, and a lot of them has the “this is my first time” sticker on them - peer pressure does sometime do good.

The process is quite similar to the one I went through in UK. You go through registration, to make sure you are who you say you are. Then you answer a list of questions, to make sure you are in tip top health and do not have any blood related diseases. I was almost rejected when I told them I was in UK since 97. They were rejecting people who were in Europe between 1980 - 1996, apparently that was the mad cow disease period.

The qualifying next round is then pricking your finger and collecting a droplet of your blood to see if your blood is “thick” enough, i.e. if you have high enough levels of red blood cells (or more accurately, the iron-containing part of red blood cells). The droplet is then released into a bluish solution and hopefully, it’ll just sink through without dispersing.

After qualifying all those rounds, then only you’re admitted to the actual blood extraction. This is the only part that I found different from my previous blood donation experience. Previously, I was given the option to opt for local anaesthetic so that the blood extraction needle does not hurt. I didn’t want to experience 2 needles, so naturally I went for the 1 needle option. The nurse asked again just to make sure,

“so i’ll just do it straightaway ok?”

“er… do I really need to take the anaesthetic?”

“no, not really. only Singapore does it. my country doesn’t do it as well.” obviously, the nurse is not from around here.

“oh ok, just do it then”

And let the blood flow begin…

© 2008 shang lee . com.