The pre-Halloween vampires were out in force today, collecting blood. I was one of their victims. I donated blood for the third time, but it still managed to be a "first". Given my height, weight, and blood type, I am considered a good candidate for apheresis, which I agreed to. I takes longer, but they can get 2 units of blood that way. I was a little nervous about it, but it went mostly well. I say "mostly" because after the first unit was taken and the blood had been separated, the plasma wouldn’t go back into my vein. Instead, it seemed to want to go into the surrounding tissue, which made my arm puff up a bit. They couldn’t get my vein to take it no matter what so we had to give up after just one unit. I felt bad about that, but the truth is, I’d gotten light-headed and cold and I really wanted to be done anyway.
I had soda and water and juice and cookies afterward and I am warming up now. Oh, and the other advantage to apheresis is that I can’t donate blood again until February–nearly twice as long as when donating whole blood. So I have a while before I have to go through this again.
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