Blood Drive Bygones

Donating blood is one of those things where you’re either completely cool and unaffected by it, or you’re so grossed out and uncomfortable that you couldn’t even imagine yourself going through the process. Granted, there are some people who fall in the middle of that spectrum, people who are kind of squeamish but still want to do something good. That’s where I had found myself at the beginning of this ordeal. A blood drive was being hosted at my school, and I was debating whether or not I should donate because, at the time, I thought that I might have had an iron anemia. That wasn’t the case though, and seeing as though I had donated before, and it had gone fine, I decided to go ahead with it. That was my first mistake.

The day of the drive, I could feel my anxiety mounting as the hands on the clock ticked incessantly, modicum by modicum, towards the time that I was supposed to donate. I had made sure to drink plenty of water before hand so that I’d be hydrated and so that they’d be able to find a vein, but despite that I found myself drinking more as I sat outside the health room waiting for my turn to go in. It was then that time seemed to speed up, as I found myself wishing that I could have a few more minutes, if not seconds, to prepare myself for what was to come. When I got inside, I answered all of the questions on their survey, got my finger pricked to make sure my iron levels were okay, and then moved to where I’d be spending the next 15 to 20 minutes. I had managed to calm myself down by then, and from that point on everything went really smoothly, at least, I assumed it had. That was my second mistake.

As I lay there, slowly rolling the cylinder that they had given me back and forth in my hand, I tried to block out the constant tingling discomfort that was pulsing in the spot where the needle was put in my arm. Honestly, that’s what bothers me the most about the whole process, not the fact that blood was being siphoned out of my body. At one point, the guy who was drawing my blood made a comment along the lines of, “Wow, your bag is filling up really fast! You should be done really soon.”, as he adjusted the mechanism to slow the flow a little bit. At the time, I thought nothing of it because he said it so cheerfully and with a smile. That was my third mistake.

When my bag was full, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief when they finally pulled the needle out of my arm and pressed the gauze against the inside of my elbow. With my freedom finally back, I smiled to myself as I elevated my arm; it was finally done, and nothing had gone wrong. That’s what I had thought, at least. I felt a little bit cold, but I didn’t pay attention to that because I tend to get cold really easily, anyway. They had me stay laying down for a little bit, so that I wouldn’t be shocked by sitting up too fast, which is a normal precaution after someone donates blood. After a few minutes, I was told that I could sit up slowly if I was feeling alright. As I went to do so, the woman asked me if I was sure I wanted to sit up right at that moment because I could stay they for as long as I needed to. I really did feel fine though, so I slowly sat up. That was my fourth mistake.

After a minute or two, I was still feeling great, so they had me slowly swing my legs to the side of the bed. I figured that everything was finally done and over with, so I’d be able to leave in a minute, but as I sat there, a feeling of nausea crept up on me. The woman was walking by, so I told her, and she said that I could lay down again if I needed to or I could try drinking or eating something. Thinking that it was just my stomach getting upset, I asked for some water, and sat there, taking a few cautious sips, but it didn’t do me any good; the nausea didn’t go away. I don’t know how much time passed in between then and what happened next, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute, at most. I suddenly got extremely light headed and dizzy, and not having any real sense of balance, I thought that I was about to fall over. Almost simultaneously, my vision started to go black. You think that they’re exaggerating in movies when a person is about to pass out and they represent it with a fuzzy ring of black that slowly moves inward, blocking out the screen, but that’s exactly what it was like. Realizing what was happening, I went to turn around and call out to my friends who were hosting the drive and were sitting at the table behind me. As I went to do so, there was a slight pressure in my ears, and I realized that I couldn’t hear anything. As a result, I had no idea how loud or how quiet I was talking. I tried again, saying their names and asking for help, but I could feel my voice getting weak and my consciousness slipping away. I went to turn back around and was about to collapse when one of the people from the Red Cross came over and laid me down. If she had been a second later, I would have passed out.

My vision was still thrown off, but despite that I could tell that they were trying to ask me questions; however, their voices were so muted that they were nearly inaudible. I wanted to let them know what was going on so I kept trying to say, “I can’t hear what you’re saying” over and over again, not really knowing if they could hear me because I could barely hear myself. The nausea was almost overwhelming, and I began shaking from the cold, which had gotten much more intense. They gave me a blanket, but they also rushed to put ice packs on my neck, cooling the blood as it passed through my major arteries so that it would spread to the rest of my body and drop my temperature. Apparently I was too hot, but the cold of the ice against my skin was what seemed to be scalding me. Despite that they did help, seeing as though my hearing returned, the nausea decreased dramatically, and, when I finally opened my eyes again, my vision returned to normal. I had closed them because everything that had happened was so overwhelming and the lights were so bright, I just wanted to recede into myself in order calm down.

The time from when I sat up to when I was finally able to open my eyes again couldn’t have been longer than two or three minutes, as it all happened so fast. The recovery time after, though, was a lot longer. My friend came over, gave me sips of water through a straw, and even offered to feed me gummies since I was still out of it. The whole situation was embarrassing and I didn’t want to bother her, so at first I said no. She reminded me that it was literally her job as a nurse and that it wasn’t that big of a deal, and after a lot of persisting, I finally said yes. I think that her feeding me gummies helped to lighten the mood, and I started laughing at the whole situation. That almost made me choke on a gummy, but that just made me laugh even more; how ironic would it be if after all of that, I died from choking on a little fruit snack. Once I was actually feeling better, I moved to a bed by the snack table, and started eating so that I could get my blood sugar back up. I probably spent another half hour there, just resting and joking around with my friends. After I finally left the health room, I went to lunch in the cafeteria (yes, to eat more food).

Apparently I looked awful because a couple people asked me if I was okay. I just laughed and told them that I had donated blood and that it hadn’t gone so well. Being able to joke about what had happened helped me to calm myself down, and in a sense get over what had happened sooner. However, what I didn’t realize until much later was that I hadn’t really gotten over, at least, not completely. It took me a while to realize it, but my subconscious had been traumatized by what happened. At first, I noticed that I would unconsciously shudder every time I thought of needles or heard something that had to do with blood being drawn, then that trauma started manifesting itself in other ways. Every something would touch the insides of my elbows, I’d flinch away, but worse than that was what would happen whenever I would have to get blood drawn for tests at the doctors. It never used to bother me, but after what happened, every time I have to undergo that I get really anxious, and can’t look at or think about what’s going on, or it will get so much worse. One time that I had to have quite a bit drawn, I was so nervous and disquieted that even though I was trying to regulate my breathing to calm myself, I almost started hyperventilating, and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, even though that had never happened before.

Still, I’m grateful that the effects aren’t worse, which I’m sure they would have been if the situation hadn’t been handled the way it was. Having both the staff and my friends take care of me, and being able to talk about what I went through and joke about it helped me to recover much faster than I would have if I would have let my anxiety take over in the moment. Based on what I experienced, I guess it really is true that laughter is the best medicine

Photo by Wiedmaier on Foter.com / CC BY-NC