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I've donated blood 4 or 5 times in the past few years. I try to aim for twice a year though i haven't quite been keeping up to that standard. The actual donation part is usually pretty quick for me, but for some reason it takes an hour half the time to even get to the donation chair.
I hated hated hated needles, and still do to an extent, but I managed to finally suck it up enough to give blood. Also, a trip to the hospital for emergency surgery (an appendectomy) a year ago has futher helped me get over my needle hatred. You learn not to mind when it takes three attempts to get an IV in when that IV will contain morphine. So I'm not nearly as bad as I was, but I still looked away and talked to the nurse while she was sticking me this last time to distract myself.
The first time I ever gave was actually September 12th, 2001. The blood people were already scheduled to come by my high school that day for a blood drive, and I had signed up for a time a week or so in advance so i'd be able to (they usually ran out of time slots in the drives at my school). Then the attacks happened on the 11th and they decided to open it up to the whole community on the 12th, which really bogged the whole deal down and got everyone out of quite a bit of class time. And football practice time, our coach was pretty upset about that, but we still won the next game so it was all good.
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...And then I found $5!
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