Alrighty. I did it. I donated my blood. Yeah. It was an interesting experience...

Before the whole thing, I had to wait about a half hour before I got in a bus. I was nervous, but I tried to ignore it. No big deal. So, once I got in, they started questioning about the places I had traveled in the past because of malaria issues. I was ok, of course, but the questioning revealed to me that if my cruise back during Thanksgiving had gone to the correct places(namingly Zihuatenejo), I wouldn't have been able to donate. Thanks to a worse quality cruise several months ago, I still had my chance.

Yeah, so I was still nervous. I mean, I had never done this before and I don't particularly care for needles, but I wasn't going to let it get in my way. I sat in the chair and tried to relax. Once they found my vein, they took a second to determine if it was big enough to drain from, then I had the needle in me before I knew it. They gave me a little squishy thing to hold and squeeze when I needed to. It was a funny thing. I was still nervous, though.

As time went by, I did my best not to look at my left arm even though it was like having a train wreck next to me. At one point, my vein had apparently flattened, which is probably bad, and I had to start playing with the squishy in my hand too get my flow going right again. I was still jittery and scared with this thing in my arm, and playing with something in my hand made me get more neurotic as the minutes went by.

So my left arm started to feel like it was falling asleep. I figured it was normal. I grew more and more fidgety with the squishy. Then my right arm started to get the same sensation. Probably fine, I thought. I began to sweat a little. I leaned my head over towards the window and closed my eyes for a moment. Then the feeling crept up into my face, my breathing became labored, and my hearing half cut out. I looked up confused and started to sweat more.

So yeah, much coughing and a face full of ammonia later, I was fine. Turns on all those symptoms mean that I almost passed out. I didn't know cos, well, I've never passed out before. Thankfully, I didn't today. It was all icing on the cake that all this happened while I was laying next to someone with AB positive blood. Of course, only I'd find that funny. So, I got myself filled with Gatorade and cookies and called the adventure over.

Yeah. Adventure. I'd probably do it again, but next time I'll just make sure to eat more before I go in and relax more. Bring music or something. Yeah. Someone better make use of that blood.