What happened the very first time I donated blood
I am a huge believer in the effectiveness of a one-on-one interaction. In the Second Year of Degree College I stood for the Class Representative elections. I remember I made a personal appeal to each and every student of S.Y.BSc to vote for me. As a result each and every student turned up on election day to vote and I won by a margin so huge which the college had never ever seen before.
The very first event organized by the newly elected Students Council was a Blood Donation Drive. My MO intact, 8am onwards, on the day of the event, I approached each and every student of S.Y.BSc yet again to convince them to donate blood. Most of them did. At the fag end of the event at 12:30pm, it was my turn to give blood. I lay down on the table and stretched out my right hand. The doctor encircled my upper arm tightly with the fabric strip of the blood pressure machine, searched for the vein, found it, inserted the needle to draw out the blood that would be collected in a bag. The blood was collected and just as the doctor took out the needle from my arm, my eye fell on the full bag of blood and suddenly the world was a merry go round. My thought, just before I fainted, was that the doctor was quite good-looking.
It was a pretty embarrassed-me that regained consciousness which I assume was a couple of minutes later. I’m sure no slippers or onions were used in the process. After a sweet coffee and a couple of biscuits I was fine. And my parents wanted me to be a doctor. Who knew!
We had a great collection and the drive was a huge success. All those who donated blood that day got a little card which mentioned their blood group and it entitled them to receive free blood for a period of one year from that date.
Many years later I got another opportunity to donate blood but they refused to take it because in the past few months I had suffered three bouts of malaria. Totally my loss.
P.S.: BloodConnect is a group of motivated individuals working towards a single goal – “To solve the problem of blood shortage in India”. When you donate blood, you can save a life. Please donate and encourage others to do too.
This post is in response to a friend who tagged me as part of the #IBloodConnected_DidYou Initiative of BloodConnect.
soniaraowrites 
I applaud you for that. I’ve never donated and hope am able to do so in the future. The last time I fainted was one month back when I went for tooth extraction, one month back.
OMG, Vishal. Fainting during a tooth extraction! Hope you’re ok, now. But yes, do donate. It does save lives. Thanks for dropping in here. 🙂
Hi Sonia,
Awesome post. I donate blood every four months. I started doing this since my college days. It got to the point of giving my certificates to friends for their birthdays (sort of a good luck charm you see) and many of my friends followed suit.
Good that you donated blood once and should do it more often. You never know who’s life is saved while you garner the blessings of the family. And no good deed goes unrecognized (karma is a bitch and she does bite back for bad deeds so I am rooting for her to give leverage to those that have done a good deed).
Cheers n tc.
Usha
You are a lovely soul, Ushasri. Respect. Now I am inspired to try again to donate blood.
Awwwww you are too sweet a person. I am glad you are going to try again. 🙂
Blood donation is an important task. In Chennai there are a number of motivated youth who actively support blood donation running FB groups and connecting patients and donors. Ideally every organisation/company should run an internal blood bank.
What you say is absolutely correct. And even if the organisation/company does not maintain an internal blood bank (infrastructure n maintenance issues, I’d presume) they should have an arrangement with blood banks for their workers to donate blood regularly. (A macabre aside: In which case, “khoon choosna” by employers would take on a whole new meaning) 🙂
It was awesome to read about your experience…I read about it in FB…but couldn’t finish it on time….and really I have never done that….
it is such a nice initiative….
Yes, it felt really wonderful afterwards. 🙂 The initiative by BloodConnect is really a worthwhile one.