I went in today for a platelet donation. Right from the start things didn’t go smoothly. The phlebotomist had trouble finding the proper blood vessel. The machine kept stopping during the draw and needed to be reset.
The head honcho came over after ~20 minutes to do a quick repositioning of the needle, which seemed effective at first but then turned out not to be. Eventually the phlebotomist parked herself at my machine and kept pushing Reset; then she wandered off to take care of another donor–
–and THEN I happened to look down to see nice bright red blood flowing down my left armrest and pooling on the floor.
I did NOT scream, but I did yelp. “Hey!” I said. “Something’s wrong!”
“What is it?” asked the phlebotomist, looking my way.
“Other than my blood leaking all over the floor, nothing,” I said.
They came hurrying over. The needle had come out of my arm and blood was flowing from the needle. “It’s not your blood,” they assured me, “it’s just the needle that’s leaking,” but although I understood what they were saying, sort of, the blood had most definitely once been mine, and so that statement was perhaps not entirely comforting. Regardless, they bandaged me up, removed *my *excess blood from me and the chair and the floor, and sent me directly to the canteen. My donation was over.
“We have good news and bad news,” they said after a few minutes. “The good news is that we probably did manage to get a unit of platelets.”
“That’s…good,” I agreed. “And the bad news?”
“The bad news is that we didn’t manage to replace all your blood, because, you know, it leaked, so you won’t be eligible for a whole blood donation for another 56 days.”
Well, it’s nice to know that they had my best interests at heart…
Don’t eat hot food right before you try to donate blood!