Blood Charity

Have you ever donated your blood before? It is a good thing to do, knowing that you might be able to save one's life! However, there are some people with strong religious beliefs that they cannot part with their blood nor accept blood of another.
Yesterday, for the second time in my life, I donated my blood to the Blood Bank at SJMC (the first was at KK, Sabah) as my dear colleague's father is currently treated in the ICU ... at life-threatening stage. Sad, as it sound, I sincerely pray and hope that her father will get better and life will return to norm for the whole family.

First, I was asked to weight myself (darn.. I feel so fat!), then the vampire nursey pricked my finger to get some blood out (ok, so its Type A). About 5 minutes later, after filling up the form, my name was called. Time to suck my blood out! The vampire nursey spoke to me with excitement, "you get to choose which bed you want! :D " Wow! Really??? (I almost rolled my eyes). All the beds looked the same to me...in the end I chose the one closest to the tv.

Then, the scary moment began. I thought I would be cool about it, having done it before in KK. But when I saw the needle, I wanted to run. I kept telling myself, "its all right..just a prickly feeling...its all right". So I tried to make conversation with the nurse to keep it light & easy.

Me: So...I heard we get fat after donating our blood....
Nurse: (smiling)..ok so this is a ubat bius (anaesthetic drug) - (whilst jabbing me)

Me: Huh? Ouch! For what?

Nurse: Cuz the next needle is really big so, we dont want you to feel the pain

Me: HARR???! You mean there are 2 needles???! (last time in KK, I don't quite remember being jabbed twice!..did I? Could it be that I went into a shock that now I cannot remember anything?)

When I saw the big a** needle with a transparent bag attached to it, I almost died.

(In KK, in 2005, I donated - 250ml. Here, in SJMC, they sucked me for 450ml! If only Edward Cullen was next to me, I don't mind donating 1000ml!...)

Picture courtesy of Google Images -

It looks exactly the same as the day my blood got sucked out - voluntarily of course. I felt a little woozy after that, but its all good. I'm glad I did this. Afterall, I have lots of blood to spare!

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