A date that should forever be remembered as momentous. To begin at the beginning.
I got up a few minutes later than usual at 07:07. Shower took me to 07:25, again, a little later than usual. I went down to breakfast in extraordinarily high spirits. Don’t ask me why, I don’t really know, I just know I was very happy. Both the Apple Juice and the Orange Juice were funny, and probably not really fit for human (or indeed animal) consumption. I tried a Strawberry yogurt instead of my usual rhubarb, it was nice, but I think I’ll stick to what I know in the future. I also had two pieces of (white) toast with butter and a clementine.
I went back to my room at the usual time. I didn’t so much hear Gemma’s knock on my door, rather I considered that I might of heard it. I was not mistaken. She did not make me late, she caused me to leave after I would have done normally, but that is mealy so I don’t have to sit around in my room, I sit around at Marischal instead. The wind on the way there was abysmal, truly horrible, I was all over the place.
A lecture from Dr. Stewart on embryology, let’s not talk about it. Then 2 hours of practical anatomy, we were starting the Lower Limb today. The demonstrator whose name I cannot remember gave a group of us an hour long crash course of everything we needed to know, I felt a bit stupid for not having anything to write on.
Then a genetics lecture, still nothing new on that front. I met up with Iain from Wilderness Medical Society outside anatomy to pay him for the Lochnagar trip next weekend, good news is I’ll be back in plenty of time for Players. I couldn’t be bothered going to get lunch or anything so I decided I could do without, which is true, I can. Thankfully Sarah, most wonderful person that she is, gave me the last of her hosin duck wrap and a whole bag of M&S chocolate raisins. I am deeply in her debt. At lunch we got in to a simply super *cough* debate on the origin of the species and evolution in general. Here are the ingredients:
- 1 part atheist and die hard Darwin defender
- 1 part agnostic and die hard Darwin defender
- 1 part Christian and evolution believer
- 1 part Christian and evolution denier
- 1 part Will Brown
And what you have is an interesting discussion and several slightly confused people at the end of it. (I can tell you straight up that 3 of the 5 parts were a little amazed at what they heard.)
Anyway, off to the final lecture, again genetics, this time taking things a little further (finally).
I cycled back with Clair and was just about to text Mark when he calls me:
“Where are you?”
“Just outside Jonhston. You?”
“At the bus stop.”
“Cool, I’ll see you there in 2.”
Then off the two of us went, arm in arm, to the Hall. We were off to give blood. Both of us were donation virgins (the words of the SNBTS Nurse, not mine). The queue was massive, which I suppose when you think about it is actually a very good thing. After much form filling and waiting I was greeted by a nice man in a very fetching set of blue scrubs, who stuck a needle in the side of my left middle finger. He then proceeded to stick a capillary tube, just the same as you or I would use in paper chromatography, and filled it up by milking the hole he had just made in my finger! Then he sends a drop falling in to a Copper Sulphate solution. (I was told this was what it was, but I’d have been able to tell anyway, when you’ve worked with Cu2+ solutions as much as I have, you just get to know.) If the drop reaches the bottom in less than 15 seconds you’re good to go. I clearly have a very healthy Hb since mine went shooting down in about 4. Then I was sent to yet another waiting area for a bed to become available. I due course a left side bed was free, so I was stuck on that one. The NA there was very nice, and she talked me through the whole thing. They have to call a real Nurse over to actually do the needle inserting. She was also very nice, although she went in to my vein at a bit of a funny angle, hence why it is still stiff. She put the needle in. It hurt. Of course it did, she if forcing a 3cm spike of metal under my skin. Now, from the moment you arrive people, staff I mean, will tell you it isn’t going to hurt. The guy who did my Hb test said afterwards that it was probably the most painful part of my day over with. I would have liked to believe him. I would have liked him to be right. The thing is, the SNBTS have invested a lot of time and effort in to spreading the word that “Giving Blood Doesn’t Hurt”. It is incredible, when you think about it, that most of us believe them, I mean, how could it not hurt. But it’s the public perception that’s important, as any government minister will tell you. So when the new girl arrives at the bed next to me, and the NA is in the course of explaining everything she explained to me asks, “It doesn’t hurt, does it?” She looks at me in that way. That expectant way. I pause for a fraction of a second. “No, doesn’t hurt at all, I could hardly feel it.” She smiles at me in her special nursey way, knowing I’m just far to nice a person to put fear in this new girl’s heart. The way I see it, it’s like Father Christmas. Everyone over a certain age knows the truth, just like everyone who has given blood knows the truth. But nobody talks about it, because it wouldn’t be right. Everybody just plays along, “No, no, didn’t hurt a bit, no problem at all.” because that’s what’s expected of you. It’s a moral duty you have not to put anyone off blood donation. A social experiment in progress perhaps.
After I had given my 485mL, which took 8 minutes, I was released to the tea area so I could replenish some fluids and have a biscuit. They wanted me to stay there for 10 minutes, but Mark had finished his donation before me, so by the time his 10 were up, I still had 5 left to go. No being one to listen to medical advice in these sort of situations, I snuck out while nobody was looking. Obviously I was fine, apart from the fact I didn’t really have use of my left arm.
So that’s my first blood donation experience. It makes you feel good and at the same time really, really rubbish. I just felt so tired. After dinner I had planned on getting some work done, but there was absolutely no chance of that happening since I barely had the energy to engage in conversation (indeed I often found myself not really listening to what people were saying, I was instead drifting off into another world). Instead I went up to Gemma’s room and we watched a film together. ‘The Notebook’, a romance, obviously her choice, I didn’t have the energy to fight for something else. In the end, it wasn’t that bad, clearly I can’t say I liked it, that would violate every male code of film watching, but it could have been a lot worse. Things progressed.
And that’s my day. I realise I may not have told it very well, but from my point of view it was one of the best days since I’ve been here, certainly one of the more different. So I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who made it happen. And a special thanks to Mark, Sarah and Gemma. Without those three, it had the potential to be a really rubbish day indeed.
Cheers guys.
