Donating Blood - a rough hobby

I have been donating blood with the Red Cross off and on since I was 16 and in high school.  Whenever it's convenient, I do it and since they often come to work, if I happen to be in the building that day, I will go do my duty and give them a pint of my A positive blood.  It's the right thing to do.

I have little veins and they are deep and they move.  I always tell everyone who is trying to draw my blood about these tricky little guys because it usually saves me getting poked twice.  This time was no exception.  I made my speech and he found what he thought would be a good vein.  It looked okay to me though I think the one a little further to the outside of my arm is better but who am I to judge?  I've never drawn my own blood or tried to stick a needle in my own vein.  So the guy drew some little lines on arm (the purple dash marks in the pic below) to mark his spot and popped it in.  It didn't feel much different than usual but he almost immediately got a little worried and called another nurse over.  He warned me that I was going to have a bruise.  No biggie.  It's not that unusual that I get  a little bruise when I give blood.  I bruise pretty easy.  Afterwards, he put ice on my "bruise" and told me to keep the ice on as much as possible all day (this was early morning) and to start putting warm compresses on it the next day.  Yeah, whatever.  And off I went back to work after stopping for the mandatory cookies and juice!  Breakfast!

When I took the bandages off when I got home I was a little shocked.  This was more than a little bruise!  Not horrible, but not a little bruise.

Almost a week later, it was definitely not a little bruise and wasn't even close to where the needle had gone in!

I think next time I'm not going to say anything about having little deep veins that move.