American Red Cross

Today at 11:15 I signed up to give blood to the American Red Cross. For the past couple of days I have been pretty nervous to give blood because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I heard stories about people getting really dizzy and even passing out. So here is how my first experience of giving blood went.

First when I arrived I had to sign in and do all that stupid stuff. Then they had me drink some water because it supposedly is supposed to help prevent the dizziness. Then this nurse lady came up to me and told me to follow her, so I did. We went to this little boxed in area when she took my iron levels and temperature. Everything went well then I had to answer a bunch a questions that we ok except some of them we very weird. Such as, "have you ever had sex in Africa in the past 12 months, has anyone ever stabbed you with a needle involving steroids or any other form a drug" and the weirdest one I believe would be the question that asked, "have you had sex with a man in the last 12 months." I didn’t really get why questions like this were asked when giving blood. Next they took me out to where everybody else was giving blood and had me lay down on a bed. A different lady then found my vein and cleaned my arm with this weird brown liquid. Then she took this giant needle and put it all the way in my arm, which burned! Eventually the pain went away and they gave you this ball to squeeze and when I squeezed it I could feel the blood pulse out my arm, which was really cool. When it was all over I got to eat a ton of cookies and popcorn, which made it worth it.