Thursday, July 30, 2009

Day 5: Donating blood

My blog won't be very long today. I am feeling a bit lightheaded after donating blood today. I will commit myself to 10 mins of writing on this blog. If my grammar and sentence structure is not very good, I am very sorry.

This morning I went to see my doctor. While I was there I asked him if he had any advice on donating blood. He said, 'there are 4 good things about donating blood'
1) it is a good thing to do
2) you get cookies at the end of it
3) you get to find out your blood type
4) you find out if you have enough iron in your blood

I was really excited about getting the cookies ;)..jk.

I got to my appointment at 1:30 pm. First thing they do is test your iron level. If your iron level is too low, you are not allowed to give blood. My iron level is fine so I continued on to the next phase. The next phase was filling out a questionnaire. The questionnaire asked you if you are at risk of HIV and if you are exposed to / sexually active with someone who is at risk of HIV. After the questionnaire, you are taken into a room to talk to a nurse. The nurse then takes your heart rate and your blood pressure. Once you pass that phase, you are now on to the donating blood stage. They remind you that you can stop at any time and choose not to donate blood. After 10 mins or so (depends on how quickly your blood flows into the viles), you are then lead to the refreshment area. There you get your replenishment of juice and cookies.

It's 10:40 pm and I'm still feeling a bit lightheaded and a nauseated. I am heading to bed and I hope to make more sense tomorrow night.

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