~light of the world~

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Yes, the once-in-a-year blood donation exercise in school, as expected, was held today.

This year, I thought, since I'm 18 already, I don't need parental consent. So unlike last year when I forgot to get the form signed by my parents, it won't matter.

I was a bit worried that my blood pressure might be deemed too low by the doctor like in 2006 when I first tried to donate blood at school. However, my doctor told me some time later that it's okay to have such a blood pressure (55/85 or something like that) since I'm still young.

Hence, I hoped that all would go well today. When Eesha, Melody and I went to the hall and were filling out the forms, a blood-taker lady asked us who was going for the first time, which was Mel and I.

Then she dragged us off to see if our veins were prominent enough to draw blood from, or something like that. She started with Mel, by using the blood pressure gauge thing around the upper arm, asking her to repeatedly squeeze this squishy thing, while doing something to her arm.

And suddenly her veins were really obvious! And I think it worked for both arms. At the point when we'd been hauled off I felt a sense of 'doom', as if I knew it was going to screw up at this point.

And sure enough, when they lady tried to find mine, somehow she couldn't really see the vein? She even asked another lady to try, and they mentioned something about "to the side", "near the tendon", "too short" and goodness knows what else.

So, the lady told me to go do some weightlifting which would apparently solve the problem, and to come again to donate. Sigh. My final year in NJC and my second attempt to donate blood was thwarted by my own stupid veins.

It's as if some cosmic force is preventing me from donating because I secretly have some rare unknown blood disease or something. Gah.

Labels: school

xuan blogged at 10:21 PM

May your light shine...
in the darkness...