hello whispering snow.

oh monday.. starting the week off right by skipping 2 out of my 3 classes... haha

hopefully tomorrow i can get back into the swing of school.

exciting news to report today, i donated blood for the first time! 

i have been helping out the last few weeks with the blood drive and signing people up for it at our booth. i realized i couldn't convince others to sign up and donate blood if i wasn't going to do it myself haha. so i gained the courage, signed up, and today was the day. 

as my doctor has informed me, i am "low hemoglobin" aka low iron. hence why i'm a weaky, constantly cold, and tired often. so i take vitamins to boost it. and the day before and of i made sure to eat iron enriched foods like broccoli (ew. take note this is the 2nd time i've eaten vegetables since i've been in college... woops. don't tell my mom). i was expecting the worst because i have bad luck with these things. overall i think it went well? minus the fact that they could not find my veins. took 2 different people to try. and i had to pump my hand majorly to get blood. felt like it took forever. but i survived! and i surprisingly did not pass out! i blacked out once.. haha and i've been a little weakling today, but i'm pretty sure that's normal. i don't think i would have been able to do it without my sweet friend nichel encouraging me. we signed up together because i knew i would need a friend to help me. she's a champ at doing this. i'm so happy i did it. my 1 pint of blood will help save 3 peoples lives. and that makes it all worth it. 

after i rested for awhile and felt okay again i went and volunteered the rest of the time. i made bows to put on peoples bandages and walked around and talked to people donating to help distract them. if they needed a hand to hold i would sit with them. i just tried to help put them at ease. i made lots of friends today haha. some people donating were way funny. and the nurses too. i think it's such a cool thing that they spend their days getting blood to help save lives. how awesome.

in order to help out with the blood drive i had to get trained and informed of all these details about blood drives. during our meeting we learned that in the state of hawaii alone they need 200 pints of blood a day to help saves lives. today alone we had so many people donating all day long and they estimated that we will collect about 70 pints of blood? after all the hype of this blood drive, that's it? not even enough to save lives for one day. i never realized how much good donating blood did. why don't more people donate? i was always just scared. but when i think about that person in the hospital who is scared for their life, i realized i can get over a day of being scared. if you've never donated before, i definitely encourage you to donate. your blood will go to use within that week. so i know for a fact that i will have saved 3 lives this week. so rewarding to know.

i guess i can cross save someones life off of my bucket list :)

xoxo

L