Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Newbie at Expert's Place

A friend of mine and I used to donate blood at blood drives and also at hospitals. When I was in Kedah, I went to the Kedah hospital and he went to Klang hospital. Now that I'm back in KL, we go donate together, at least can catch up with stories and news over lunch or makan-makan or while donating.

So, well, this time we decided to go to THE place to donate blood, where else but Pusat Darah Negara (trans: Country Blood's Bellybutton). No, it's Nasional Blood Bank. The place is nice. You even have to take a number and sit down awaiting for your number to be called. Interestingly enough, there's only three of us, so why waste paper to print the numbers?

Without needing for me to give a story about the process to donate blood, I will skip directly to the blood donating room. Just to give a visual here, the room is like those army bunkers with at least 15 beds at one side and another 15 at the other side. So, anyway, on with the main story.

The lady came to me, swab my arm with alcohol to look for the elevated vein. She took a few moments then told me to hold on. She called her supervisor and both of them came, and the supervisor said "correct lah, there lah". Wha?! First sign of danger. Then she proceeded to do the necessary. Checked my blood pressure and squeezed on the biceps area, and then proceeded to put in the needle (there are more processes before needle go in, but I'm not story-ing that). Then, standard operating procedure (SOP), to release a bit of the squeeze from blood pressure thingy to allow blood to flow back into the arm freely.

The needle went a bit too far in (as compared to my usual blood donation at other times) before it punctured a blood vessel. Then, usual SOP, she will tape the tube (that's attached to the needle) to my arm so that the needle does not come out. The tape, she taped on her glove as well, so when she pulled her hand away, the tape followed her gloves and nearly pulled out the needle. Wha crap?!

My friend faced similar situation with another 'nurse'. Looks like the expert blood 'extractor's are all out on blood donation drive. Anyway, about halfway through, due to the bad placement of the tape on the tube (should be nearer to needle, not 3 inches away on the arm), the needle started to get pushed out of the blood vessel. Less blood got pumped into the bag. I found this out especially at the end when they took some sample into a test-tube from the cut tube (ya, they cut the tube after successful filling up the bag). My blood was practically just dripping and not flowing.

We left the place saying that we won't come back to Pusat Darah Negara and opted instead for blood drive (best preference) or normal hospital.

A day after my donation, the following happened to my arm. I believe when the needle got pushed out from the blood vessel, some blood still entered the needle, and some spilled into my inner dermis. And then blood clot happened, and ended up clotting another area as well. Below is a picture of my arm


I had no choice but to massage the blood clot area (especially the big one) with Minyak Gamad and then two days later, it became like this....

Today it looks a lot better already. Still some sign of the small blood clot. The rubbed blood clot is almost gone.

Note to self.... find the expert, not the place that people think experts are supposed to be at.

2 comments:

eLLe K said...

That is just to gruesome lah dear. Meremang bulu roma I. Sebab tu la I ni penakut when it comes to donating blood!

Anonymous said...

aiyooooooooo......