The Dragon's Keep

methods of torture

Ok, so I haven't been able to find a job that will work around my weird class schedule this semester. I survived off of $28 a week helping my aunt with her house and kids for a little while, but I need a little extra to start saving for other things (like getting home for Christmas lol), so I finally resorted to doing what I vowed never to do: donating my blood plasma for money. For first timers, you have to go through a bunch of paperwork and questioning and even a brief physical before you can start donating regularly. You can donate twice a week, and you get $25 the first time and $35 the second time you donate in a week. But that actually changed down to $20 and $30 respectively as of this week. Still, I think it's worth it until I can find something else, and if nothing else, I thought, I should be able to conquer my fear of needles, NO problem. The first two times were a breeze, and I didn't even bruise at all!

Fast forward to yesterday. They always use my right arm because the vein is easy to find and goes the way it should up my arm. So the guy stuck me, which really doesn't even hurt at all, but the blood wasn't flowing, so he pulled it out a little bit until it did. The way it works is they take a portion of your blood, separate the red cells from the white, and then give you back your red cells and repeat the process until they have enough plasma. Well, when the machine tried to give me back my red cells, I could feel pressure and a stinging sensation from the Citrine(or whatever) that they mix in to keep the blood from coagulating. The guy tries to fix it, but he nicked the vein or somesuch on the initial insertion, so that arm was basically screwed (and you'll notice the wonderful bruise left behind in the right picture. It's pretty sore just FYI). I figured they would just call it a day and I wouldn't be able to donate again until my red cells replenished like from a normal blood donation, but they didn't want to cheat me out of my only income and so they moved to the other arm.

After tapping around on my left arm for a bit, they finally found the vein, which hooks a left in my arm before it goes up like it's supposed to, so they had to put the needle in practically sideways. And OMG let me tell you, that sucker HURT! It didn't on the initial poke, but as they kept pushing it in to find the vein, HOLY FRACK no other needle has EVER hurt that bad before. ><; To top everything off, even though the donation process went smoothly from that point, when he yanked the needle out he wasn't careful, and it scratched me after it came out! AND he did it so fast that I also have a bit of bruising in that arm as well. ><;! These guys were definitely not as experienced as the first phlebotomists who took care of me last week.

So much for overcoming my fear of needles; I think I just may be traumatized for life! xD

posted by Erin Duncan @ 12:51 PM