"I think you have some of my blood on your glasses"

I think donating blood is a pretty awesome thing to do. When I see a blood drive, I always think "I'm young, I'm strong, I'm not using all 10-12 pints right now" and make an appointment and donate some a-plus A+ (blood puns!) to those in need. You get to save someone's life, and you get a cookie - pretty sweet, huh? Usually yeah...

One of the most recent times I had donated, it started out pretty standard. I saw a flier for a blood drive close to work and made a donation appointment over my lunch hour. I didn't think I would come out of it with a good story, I just planned on getting some juice, maybe stealing an extra cookie and proudly wearing my "I donated blood, be nice to me" sticker for the rest of the afternoon (girls like a guy who saves lives, right?).

I sign in, have the standard Q&A with the nurse and 5 minutes later I'm in the donating chair - 1 step closer to my juicebox and sympathy-inducing sticker. Nothing out of the ordinary yet...then they introduced me to the new girl. Apparently I was lucky enough to be her very first donor of the day on her second or third day as a phlebotomist. As she nervously laughed while telling me her name I had made a mental note that I will be taking 2 extra cookies.

She looks at my arms, she gets a puzzled look on her face and announces that she might have some trouble finding my veins. I do not want to brag about it or anything, but I have awesome veins. Drug addicts would KILL for veins like these - there is no way she should have had any problems finding them. After some "careful" contemplation she grabs the needle and nervously smiles at me. Seeing a mix of fear and apprehension in the eyes of someone who is lunging at your arm with a needle is never good.

She is about to make her first attempt and I begin to picturing the needle going completely through my arm when she suddenly stops and screams for her trainer to come over and see if she is "doing this right".

This isn't a good sign.

The trainer comes over, tells her to calm down and tells her to just shove the needle in my vein. She takes a deep breath and we officially have "Try #1". From my angle, it looks like she is too far over to the left. When more blood starts trickling out of the puncture wound than in the bag, it's official.

Time for try "#1.5"...how is it 1.5? Why not just try #2??? Well, she decides to just move the needle around in my arm to try to find the pesky vein.  After a few seconds of digging, she things she might have found it. Thinks? Call me a perfectionist, but after someone rakes around the inside of my arm with a needle, I kinda want a guarantee. She puts some tape over the needle to keep it in place and goes off to read some kind of instructional "How to collect blood" manual...again, not a good sign.

She comes back over and notices that my blood bag is filling slower than it should be and thinks that because she had to "dig around a bit", I might actually started to clot...due to the apparent internal damage...so in my head we are now up to 2 juice boxes, 4 cookies and 3 stickers. She suggests she try moving the needle up and down to help get the blood flowing.

At this point, my arm is a little numb, what the hell why not. She moves it a little and goes back to her book. Just as she flips a page, I look down and see a stream of blood dripping off of my arm onto the chair. I try to catch the attention of the other nurse, but my attentive trainee notices me and asks if I need help. "I think I'm bleeding out a bit, can I just get a towel or something? I'm OK but I don't want to get blood on your chair" OH NO! she yells and for some reason, things that re-adjusting the needle will help - is she trying to plug the hole? She moves the needle and blood sprays into her protective glasses. Not a ton of blood - just enough to spray her in the face and make her start screaming. At this point, the experienced nurse decides it's time to step in and save my life ( I was actually starting to wonder if the trainee was a hire hit-woman, I began to ask myself who I had pissed off lately).

After the "Blood Gushing Out of  My Arm" situation is resolved, the nurse (the one who is not trying to kill me) levels with me. "OK, here is the deal, she messed your right arm up, it clotted up from all of the digging. We don't have enough blood in the bag for a donation - we either need to collect a full pint from you or throw this bag out, we can only accept full bags - we can try your other arm - and I'll give you an extra sticker...you've been through alot".

There was no way I was going to:
a) Have gone through a bloodbath and not have had it done anyone any good.
b) Pass up an extra "Be nice to be, I donated blood" sticker.

"Ok, let's get the rest from the other arm, but I want you to do it, and I want an extra cookie".

The rest of the donation went pretty standard. I got my extra cookie, someone out there got a pint of my blood when they really needed it, and "Attila the phlebotomist"  kept her distance as she wiped her glasses off and nervously paged through her manual for the rest of my visit.

Even though I ended up a few pints lower than I expected, I still think donating blood is awesome, but do you know what is even more awesome? Not sucking at your job as a phlebotomist so you don't massacre the donors.