Blood Drive

I am not the biggest fan of blood, needles and really anything that has to do with the medical field. I have never given blood except for two little blood tests at the request of my doctor. I am envious of my friends in the medical field as I wish I could handle working in that line of work. I can't even imagine what a fulfilling job that would be.

When I was a Freshmen in college I looked into what classes I had to take to become a dermatologist. For some weird reason things that have to do with the skin are very interesting to me. Well then I found out that I had to take an anatomy class, so the dream of being a dermatologist quickly faded along with the smell of formaldehyde lab coats.

To give you an idea on how much I cant stand things having to do with the medical field, my wonderful friend Leah (who was my freshmen year roommate at Teeter-Weissler dorm at IU) is a physical therapist and she took anatomy our freshmen year and when she would study in our dorm room many times I would leave because I hated listening or seeing images regarding the human body.

On May 15th I decided that I needed to get over this giving blood fear. Finish Line had the Blood Center come to the office for a blood drive. I had to report to the Blood Mobile at 11am and then answered a million questions before they hooked me up to the blood thing. I will be honest the needle is much bigger then I thought it would be. I must admit it was definitely not as bad as I had pictured it in my head and it really didn't hurt as much as I thought it would either. I couldn't watch the technician put the needle in my arm, I actually had to switch chairs because they couldn't find a vein in the left arm which only made me more nervous.

Once they finally found a vein they could use, I squeezed the crap out of the squishy thing I was supposed to squeeze ever 5 seconds and quickly pumped two bags full of my A, positive, blood. I was feeling great about giving blood and proud that I defeated my fear of doing it. Then they removed the needle and all of a sudden a heat flash swept over my body and I started sweating and feeling nauseous. Apparently I lost most of the color in my face because two different techs rushed over and asked me what was wrong. They gave me some Gatorade to drink and turned on extra fans to cool me down and about 15 minutes later I was feeling back to normal.

While the end of my blood giving experience was not too pleasant I think overall the experience went well. I would definitely give blood again more then anything because I know how the Blood Center needs donors. Hopefully I never need blood but if I do it would be nice to know there are people out there willing to give "the gift of life" to others who need it. So if you can or are thinking about it you should just do it. It will help more people then you'll ever know.

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, In all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." -John Weley