Blood Donation

 I had blood donation at a GH blood drive set in my campus this late morning. Surprisingly I was the only donor then, so the entire process from registration to the end of the donation was pretty fluent without the need to queue.

I enjoy blood donation but there is one necessary step of it I never like – the finger-prick blood sampling, which the capillary blood is collected by lancing a finger. Typically, the medical assistant will cleanse the area to be pricked with an alcohol swab and then prick with a blood lancet. Ouch! I recall I was shocked by pain for the first time I did finger-prick because I was unprepared for the trigger mechanism of the blood lancet (I didn’t know how it works). Since then I have a little fear whenever dealing with it.

I proceeded to blood drawing after going through some examinations. The medical assistant first pressed on my elbow pit searching for my vein location. When it was found, she cleansed the skin on top with antiseptic and used a large needle to pierce it. My blood spurted out through the needle instantly.

I was given a rod to hold and squeeze repeatedly to increase the blood flow.

 

The drawing completed in less than 10 minutes and a pack of 450ml warm blood is ready to serve.

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A Delightful Morning

I was awakened by the alarm around 6, gonna resume my morning workout since last week, as I was busy preparing for my 2 midterm papers on Monday and Tuesday. As usual, few slices of wholemeal bread and a cup of horlicks oatmeal made my simple-yet-never-sated-with breakfast. After preparing myself, I cycled to the campus field by 7.

The weather was quite cold and breezy due to the midnight rain. I warmed up my body with a lap of slow jog, followed by some stretchings and then started to jog faster for 10 laps. Surprisingly, this time I’ve broken my previous record, ha! 23 mins 33 secs, 33 secs faster! A slight but meaningful time to me, in fact, how many of the students here would actually mind of it in their daily life, when hanging out with friends at those mamak stalls (so-called “yamcha”) takes hours? After the jog, I did some push-ups and also light practice of few kihon rentsu. I ended my workout by some cool-downs and went to toilet to change my attires for the my lab and lecture classes later.

8:30, another 30 mins before the lab session started, I decided to have a drink at the campus foodcourt. I ordered a cup of hot plain nescafe and 2 pieces of kuih-muih, then chose to sit at my favourite spot, the very right corner of the food court. Somehow I become fixed to the place whenever I go there alone. A lonely corner huh? Not really… sitting there allows me to observe most people around, that’s my little pleasure when being alone, to observe the surroundings and analyze. Just like me, many people were there for breakfast before running day activities. I read through the labsheet to have more understandings of the lab while sipping the hot coffee slowly and enjoying the morning breeze, it’s just a relaxing moment I always long for.

8:55, done reading, just a perfect time to leave for the lab. I reached the lab right at 9, guess I did surprise some of my groupmates with my early apperance, it’s just so… strange, haha… It’s a Line Encoding experiment, students are supposed to form a group of 2 to conduct it but I managed to complete it alone, yeah~ ALONE again? So who says being alone is something terrible? At least I have a wonderful morning for being alone!