A Long Week

Well it has been a week since I last meandered into blogville. It has been an interesting week. I had my first test of the semester which went quite well. Valentine's day also passed. It was an interesting day to say the least. I will leave you with one story from the day. I decided I wanted to give blood since there was blood drive running in the student center and I haven't donated in about a year. My blood type is O-negative so I know it is important to donate often. But I digress, so I sit down and do the whole pre-donation screening and what not. Pass with flying colors as usual. Then the screener asks me if I want to donate using the Alyx machine. I said sure why not. I wasn't really sure what that meant. So I started asking some questions and found out that the Alyx machine takes twice as many red blood cells as a normal (whole blood) donation but gives me back my plasma and platelets. It does this by taking my blood, centrifuging it and then pumping the other stuff back in. Seems fine to me, I saw several other people on the machine.
So I finally get hooked up and the machine starts beeping. The technician/nurse (whatever she is) hits the machine and some buttons and it starts going again. It continues like this with the machine beeping every 15 seconds or so for the next 3-4 minutes. I asked if anything was wrong and she said no. Then a minute later she asks if I had been drinking a lot. I explained to her that I just ate lunch and drank a bottle of gatorade. She then informs me that I am dehydrated and is going to get me some saline. As soon as she turns around my arm starts throbbing and I look down and see my arm puff up like there is a golf ball chilling in my arm. I start calling to her like so "Ow, Ow, OW OW", she turns around and says "you are done" and pulls the needle out of my arm. I immediately get very dizzy and sick to my stomach. She then lays me down and that helped. After about five minutes I started to feel better. The nurse informed me that my vein had collapsed.
I was pretty nervous and embarrassed from the situation and started asking questions about whether I should be aware of anything health related for the rest of the day. She said, "no, just take five minutes over there just like normal." I was still worried and asked if I should do anything. She replied, "Well you could start working out so your veins will get nice and big." I think in my head, gee thanks you... witch. She then says, "Well, let's take a look at your right arm and see if we can do a whole blood donation." My response was "I really don't want to give blood anymore today." This seemed to catch her off guard... I am not sure why, and she said I was done. So I walked over to the food/drink table grabbed 3 gatorades and many cookies and chowed down. I wasn't going to be dehydrated anymore.
But that was how it happened. And I have a killer bruise. Nice and purple and large. Oh well, I have donated at least a dozen times with no problems and then on Valentine's day I try to give blood and fail. That has to mean something right?

Anyway, that's it for now. I will return shortly with the Top Ten list for this week, and it has something to do with the Olympics, that's all I am saying.