Blood

Yesterday was my last day of alone time since the Apells came home today. For my final day off, I decided to head into town and donate blood. Kassel is in the middle of a massive, four day blood drive and yesterday I was one of 1338 donators.

I had a general idea of where to go, so my being directionally challenged didn't pose a problem. I filled in my forms with surprisingly little difficulty, since I forgot my dictionary. I had an interview with a very nice, old doctor. There were a lot of people there so I spent a lot of time standing in queues and I drank some fizzy water, which was on tap along with Coke.

The nurses were all lovely and I ended up telling at least three my tale of coming to Germany as an au pair. They all said that NZ sounds like such a beautiful place and they want to go but... It was great German practise.

Giving the blood went very smoothly. I was completely finished and having the obligatory lie down, and feeling bored since there was nothing to look at. I sat up and was perfectly happy for four of the five sitting minutes, when suddenly I got all dizzy and my vision narrowed in a slightly worrying fashion. A passing man-nurse must have seen something on my face because he asked if I was alright, in a "I know you're not" kind of way. I only said I felt a tad dizzy and lay back down. And suddenly there were three man-nurses with a stretcher for me. It was hideously embarrassing, I got stretchered to a small private room where two doctors fussed over me, taking my blood pressure and other medically things. One decided that my pulse was far too high and put me on a drip. I'm not saying I enjoyed being dizzy but boy was it embarrassing to be put on a drip.

The doctors liked the bow I had in my hair. I learnt some new medical terms in German.

After I ate an obligatory sausage and drank some glasses of Coke, I got a four hour pass to a locally famous spa. I strolled slowly back to my bus stop and was relieved I only had about ten minutes to wait. As I was waiting, a random guy sitting nearby decided to strike up a conversationa dnwas asking me questions like, where do you live? Where's your boyfriend? Let's go drinking? Because of the blooding and the drip, I wasn;t feeling especially quick and couldn't think of any lies, except that I didn't have a phone. Thank Zeus my bus arrived a tad early.

I got home in time to cook my dinner and drink lots of water. Unthinkingly, I had saved my homework for after dinner, I still had to slog through complex German grammar before bed. Bed was slightly uncomfortable because they had stuck needles in the crooks of both my elbows and I like to sleep with my head on top of said elbow crooks.

It may have taken me three times as long as the estimated time and caused some uncomfortable situations, but I like giving blood and am throughly looking fowards to my next Blutspende!