Hi,
My name is Preetham. I am new to Sankalp, though i was told about Sankalp may be, two years ago, by my good friend LALIT PARMAR. I never thought that, blood donation is very important. Always, I had a fear in my mind that when we donate blood we become weak. This is exactly what my mother told me. She might be ignorant about blood donation. She used to never allow me to donate blood when we used to have some camps in college though I was in a condition to give blood. I was always told that its not good for the person to donate blood, he becomes weak etc.. this kind of a fear always crept into my mind. Once, my friend Lalit "enlightned" me about blood donation. He said fresh blood comes back in 24 hours but its nourishment is pretty late and takes months. So we donate blood the next time usually after 3-4 months after the blood is donated once(not sure exactly the number of months). Then one day, there was a blood donation drive in my office and I did take the first step of donating blood for the first time overcoming all fears. After the blood test being done and given an OKAY signal to donate blood. I went ahead to give it. I did feel some pain when the needle was injected but later on things were fine. I did feel nice as I was donating my own blood for the good of others. I did think that nothing will happen to me and things were fine. I had some juice and I got a smiley ball too :). This experience of mine got me to think that its really nice to donate blood as not only we help others donating blood we do get a feeling of pride from the inside that we have done something very noble.
The second time I went to donate blood was disastrous. We had about 10 beds and people we eager to donate blood after I persued many of my own friends to do the same after talking to them and kind of inspiring them that nothing would happen and its a noble deed. When I laid down on the bed the nurse tied something around my hand and she said hit my hand joint. I never knew what she was doing as she increased the blood pressure instrument and I was kind of tensed and she was hitting my joint. I really started feeling very uncomfortable. I started sweating and I told the doctor that I cant donate blood I am very uncomfortable. The doctor scolded the nurse and said you are hitting the joint at the wrong point. The vein is not where she was hitting, then the doctor released the pressure and then allowed me to rest and then after about 5 mins he put that belt and then my vein was visible and the whole process was over and I donated blood.
Basically my point here is awareness about how to hit the joint where to hit and things. I really felt uncomfortable and what if this was the case with a person who made his mind to donate blood for the first time? He will never advice anyone to give blood nor would donate it himself. Awareness among people is very important and pretty similarly awareness among the "nurses are also important". I felt really bad about this incident as she hit my hand joint very hard saying in kannada "BARTHA ILLA". I mean if you dont know atleast learn and do it properly. The same day when I was having juice after blood donation, my friend fainted and another guy whom I dont know started acting strange HUH, after this incident I really felt bad that the awareness among the nurses are very poor and they too dont know what to do where and they had to call the doc to get treated.
Hope my experience does shed some light among the areas which could be improved during blood donation.
FYI.. This camp was NOT organized by Sankalp but some other institute which I would not like to name.
Thanks,
Preetham