One Gallon Day!!!

I finally made it to one gallon donating blood! Yippee!!! It has only taken me six years! For those of you that don’t know me and my history, my iron level is always just one or two points too low to be able to give. Hence, my trying for six years to donate eight times. But hey, at least I finally made it.

There are a couple of differences in donating in MD versus the times I donated in WV. First, and this was very distressing to me, there were no Little Debbie snacks in the cantina. I had to choose from Utz pretzels or Famous Amos cookies. Not that those aren’t perfectly good snacks, but I miss my Little Debbie Fudge Rounds and Zebra Cakes. Secondly, a difference that I am VERY HAPPY about is that they didn’t put half a roll of incredibly sticky tape on my arm to hold on the cotton pad after the donation. Instead I have a bunch of bright pink gauze wrapped round and round my arm to hold it in place. This means that this evening when I go to remove it, I won’t end up removing large chunks of skin with it. YAY!!! Removing all of that tape and tearing away skin and hair was always the worst part of donating blood. But, looks like I won’t have to deal with that here!

It was an interesting day for donation today. First, though I know only a handful of people here outside of my component here at work, the girl in the chair next to me was someone I had met a few weeks ago. There are close to 20,000 people who work here and I maybe know 100 of them, yet I knew that girl. Sing with me, “It’s a small world afterall....” The poor thing was completely freaked out and started crying the first time they went to stick her, so she had to wait for a while and calm down. They came and stuck me while she waited, and finally they were able to get her calm enough that she was able to give her donation. They kept having me talk to her just to help keep her calm, so it was kind of funny. But, that wasn’t the most interesting part of the donation. The guy on the other side of me decided to pass out half way through his donation. Imagine how excited the girl on the other side of me was to see that happen! Anyways, while they were working on him to get him awake, my bag dropped, meaning that it was full. I kept looking at it, then at the people working on the other guy, then back at it, wondering how much really would be too much. After another maybe three minutes, they finally were able to revive the other guy and someone finally noticed how full my bag was and clamped it off so that it would quit drawing blood. I was just about to say something when the girl came running over and stopped it. So, they got just a little more than a pint out of me today. But, I felt fine and still feel fine two hours later, so I guess it didn’t hurt me much.

Well, I guess that is my story for my “One Gallon Day.” Hope all is well and they all of you donate blood when you can also! :)