Went to Singapore General Hospital for my very first blood donation yesterday. Blood donation is voluntary and blood is not for sale here. And I have, for the longest time, wanted to donate my blood. Just couldn't find the time to. My blood type is O- which is pretty rare which is pretty much the reason why I wanted to donate.

On Saturday, my meeting ended early and I thought why not? I had a couple of hours to spare, my kids were home with my husband and I had the use of the car. So I drove over to HSA.

I registered at the counter and the nurse gave me some phamplets, a questionaire and a sticker which she asked me to paste on my T-shirt. The questionaire was typical, asking me to declare that I'm HIV, Hepatitis free etc. The first stop was to check my blood pressure and temperature. Next was the haemoglobin level check. A nurse pricked my middle finger. It was quite painful! She squeezed a drop of blood from my finger into a beaker containing some blue solution. My blood drop sort of floated on the surface. She looked at it and squeezed another drop of blood onto a plastic strip. I was curious so I asked her what she was doing. She told me if my haemoglobin level was high, the blood would have sunk to the bottom of the beaker. I looked and sure enough, there were small little globs of blood in the beaker. Mine floated which meant my level was low and she had to do a more detailed check to see if I met the hb requirement. I just made it! Mine was 12.4 g/dl and the minimum level for lady donors got to be 12.0 g/dl.

Next I went into a hall and there were about another 12 people lying in the reclining chairs. They looked relaxed so that eased me a bit. I was getting kind of apprehensive by then. I sat down on the comfy chair and immediately a few nurses came over. One asked whether i was feeling cold, whether I needed a blanket and another asked whether I needed a drink.. wow... wish i could have people fussing over me like this everyday!

One of them cleaned my arm with an antiseptic solution and gave me an injection. Told me it would numb the area so that I wouldn't feel anything when they insert the needle. She showed me the needle and I was shocked! It looked huge and I was wondering what had I gotten myself into! But she was right, I didn't feel anything at all. She placed a rubber ball in my hand and asked me to squeeze it every 5 to 10 sec. I looked down at the blood bag and I could see it gradually being filled up with my blood... my precious blood.

The nurses came over to check on me quite freqently. It was over in about 20minutes. 300cc of blood had gone into that little bag! Again, the nurses fussed over me. I suddenly realised that I was the only one surrounded by nurses. The rest of the donors had one or two checking on them from time to time. I wondered why I was getting 'special' attention. Was I looking sickly, turning blue or what?

It was much later when I realised why. The sticker that I had on my T-shirt? It said "Be Nice to Me. This is my First Donation!"