The Bruise

I found it, along with some other really great pictures for future Memory Mondays. Just a warning, though to anyone who ever lived with me in Kerr Hall, there may be some great/embarrassing shots featuring you!

Anyway- the bruise. I got this bruise from donating plamsa. For those of you who are not familiar with this starving college student's access to cheesy bread money (thank you, Heather for introducing me to the wonder that is Pizza Hut Cheesy Bread!), let me quickly explain this process.

After having your vitals checked and promising to not have any STD's or drug addictions, the nice plasma people herd you to the back room with funky looking chairs and myriads of TV's with some old movie playing. You are then confronted with a very young technitian who will lead you to your very own funky bed-chair, and will poke and prod you with a GIANT needle and hook you to the plasma machine. This machine will the take your blood, a pint at a time, and spin it around in it's mysterious chamber with horrible wrenching sounds (I think that is what the old movies are supposed to drown out). After your plasma has been separated from your blood, the machine pumps the blood back into you with an anti-coagulant that is usually very cold and stings a little bit. This process is repeated a number of times until the desired amount of plasma has been harvested. $20 is paid each time this is done, and you can give up to twice a week. It can take up to 2 hours, but if you are sneaky and know the ropes, you can get in and out in about half an hour. I was sneaky! I always knew when to go and what to do to get it over with quickly.

One time, however, this sneakiness did not pan out the way I would have liked. I was pumping the little squishy ball so hard and I gave so much blood to the machine in such a short amount of time that I got dizzy. I tried to tell someone, but there was nobody there to hear my pleas. I woke up probably a minute or two later and I had the worst pain in my arm that I have ever felt. I looked down at my arm to see that when I had passed out, I had pulled my arm with the needle in it towards me. This caused the needle to puncture the vein and dig deeper into my arm. The worst part was that the machine was pumping my blood back into my arm- just not a real vein. I started saying, "Oh, No! Oh, No! Very loudly until someone finally came to my aid and shut off the machine. He then yanked the needle out of my arm. When I woke up the second time I was all bandaged up and the nice young man who had de-needleified me had some juice and cookies for me.

The result of this crazy and painful experience was that glorious bruise (which looked like a butterfly towards the end) and a very painful left arm. I couldn't lift heay loads for a while after that. The good news is that I still got my $20, and they let me come back 4 weeks later because I got most of my blood back (whether it was in an actual vein or not). Good times.