Not Wanted...

I have for the longest time felt my conscience tugging and been thinking that I should do my bit and start giving blood.

 

A TV-campaign last spring(!) prompted me to register, but I never got around to making an appointment to actually go and do it.
Until last Friday.

 

I proudly went for my appointment and filled in various forms and had a small interview with a very friendly nurse whilst drinking lots of water. All was fine, and I was escorted into a long rectangular room where the other good donors were sitting in chairs hooked up and donating. I made myself comfortable in the chair that tilted backwards and was feeling very smug and good about myself as I offered my arm to the nurse. 

 

She rolled up my sleeve on my right arm and started feeling around for a vein.
"Hmmm....", she said.
"I think I sometimes can be a little tricky. They tend to use the veins by my wrist", I offered.
She smiled back and said "I can't use those by the wrist, I need to check your left arm".
She did and again the "Hmmm..." came.
"I will go and ask my colleague to have a feel", she said.
I felt the entire room was looking at me, the only one not hooked up.
The same "Hmmm..." came after the colleague had felt my right arm. She then proceeded like her colleague to check my left arm. "I can't feel anything at all in the left arm", she said. "The right one is very faint and it rolls away. I don't think we can use you," she concluded. Now the entire room was staring at me (at least I think they did).
Me - the unusable one!
I hadn't even been stabbed once! 

 

She explained that instead of them starting to stab me randomly in the hope of finding it and thereby scarring the veins I was better off saving my veins in case I ever really needed access to them... Which was nice of her and makes sense, I guess.
But I still felt the rejection burning...

 

I scrambled out of the comfy chair and did the walk of shame out of the room. In the waiting area, The Professor had fallen asleep waiting for me. A thought struck me - perhaps I can just roll him in and get him hooked up ...! Imagine his surprise...
Well, of course I didn't and we couldn't as you have to register and sign up in advance. But I will work on getting him registered as he might be the only one in the family that can donate. Our Boy seems to have inherited the same type of deep embedded rolling veins that I have. They probably won't want him either.

 

But it is the thought that counts, isn't it?

☺