A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

Today I donated blood again; but while lying there watching my left arm being drained, I could not imagine a good new image this time around. I ended up just taking a macro picture of the actual penetration. Now, to spice this post up a bit, I have added a bunch of additional pictures I have taken over the last few weeks.

As for other projects, I am still in the process of reinstalling my workstation here at home, so things are very much at a stand still. It is a bit relaxing but at the same time I feel passive, I really should just go for it an reformat already.

This morning was my third time going to the Blood Centre to open up one of my veins, and my third time posting about it too. I know a few of my local friends find this thing with needles very terrible and scary, which probably is why I keep posting about it! I am so considerate, am I not? This time there is even a video, enjoy!

A bit more than a month ago I cut my fingers, pretty deep, so now I lack feeling right above the cuts and from the center of the cut to the fingertip. The transition between normal feeling and no feeling is the same as when your arm or leg is asleep, a bit tingling and weird sensitivity.

A few odd things to do when you lack feeling in the fingers used are to:

• Cut your nails, you can’t tell if it’s the nail or the finger itself you’re cutting.
• Move a wet finger over a surface which is usually not slippery, it’s odd with less friction as you can’t feel that the finger is wet.
• Move a dry finger over something cold, and the finger feels slippery where you cannot feel the cold.
• Scratch your eye, as you can’t really feel if you would go into your eye… except when you do.
• Press any hard button, you can’t feel on the skin how hard you are pushing it.
• Gripping something heavy between the thumb and that finger, it feels like you only have a good grip with the thumb as you can’t feel the friction on the finger.
• Putting a CD on the finger is an odd sensation. It feels like it should fall off, because you can only feel it resting on one side of the finger, even though you know that it is not physically possible!
• When removing a piece of tape from the finger where some parts of the skin cannot feel it, the sensation is that those parts of the skin peeled off with the tape! At least if you are not watching it.

Below is a video which includes footage of my poor fingers from shortly after I slipped with the knife to just a few days ago. Beware though, if you did not like the images in the previous post linked in the beginning, you wont like the video. It contains blood and open wounds, so if that does not suit you, do not click play!

Even though I lost a fair amount of blood when cutting my fingers three weeks ago I went to donate blood today again. My second time. This time around it went so smooth that I feel like I could do it every day! Except that I would be dried out pretty soon, eh.

I live right next to the central bus station in our town, so I just went down there, took the bus who went straight to the hospital. Arriving there I had to sit around a bit, as I was early, but then they let me in earlier than my original booking.

I’m still not very used to the puncturing of skin it requires to lose blood. I think I’m actually a bit worse at handling it since I cut my fingers. I guess that means my head is trying to tell me it does not to be cut or stabbed again!

They give you a gift as well as a drink and a sandwich every time you donate blood. This time I picked a black shirt with “Generous” on the chest. A nice thing is that they compensate you for your travelling expenses!

Both when walking to the bus station, first picture in this post, and while waiting for the bus to get back home I found the sun coming through the clouds and the wet ground to look very nice. So naturally I snapped a few pictures.

Yesterday (2008-10-05) I managed to do a really clumsy thing. I had my brothers visiting playing Zack & Wiki (not new but awesome!) so I was a bit out of focus when I battled with separating frozen bread slices for us to eat, after they had been grilled. After chopping away with less sharp tools I carelessly decided I would use my Global bread knife I got for my 25th birthday last year. It worked fantastically well, even too well. I had of course applied way too much force as the row of frozen slices previously had seemed like a solid object, but now the knife went straight through, into my unsuspecting fingers.

The first few moments of shock is quite unsettling. The feeling of seeing huge gaping gashes in your fingers is completely unreal, until the blood starts gushing out and you realize you should like… try to stop it. I ran to the sink to not mess up my kitchen, but as I was getting lightheaded and felt like fainting I got some tissues under my hand and laid down on the floor instead.

I called out for my brothers so they could phone my father, that was my instinctual reaction. He later managed to arrange a time at the emergency watch, and an hour later I was sitting in the waiting room filling out the damage report. 40 minutes later I got into a room and they began cleaning up my hand before the doctor would arrive, which took another 20 minutes.

The doctor had me straighten my fingers which hurt a whole lot and sent a funky jolt of pain through my index finger. At first they did not deem my injury very serious as a lot of dried up blood made it hard to see, so they went to another patient while the anesthetic got to work.

They got back a while later and began sewing me up. She originally did not think it was very deep, but due to the blood pumping out of the cuts she changed her mind. Instead of her first suggested one stitch on my long finger she used four, and five stitches on my index finger! The anesthetic was not completely working when she started sewing, but I wanted it over with, and after enduring three or four stitches I did not feel much anymore.

Now I am home from work trying to take it easy. Just using my fingers a little is quite painful, but I did get a fair amount of sleep tonight. Painkillers woohoo!

You might have noticed the friendly images in the text, below are some of the bloody and scary images, so if you are not into that kind of stuff avoid clicking the links! I have also added a warning screen if you step through the images in the display system.

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WARNING

THE FOLLOWING IMAGES CONTAIN BLOOD & GORE!!
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
IMG1 IMG2 IMG3 IMG4 IMG5 IMG6
END OF DANGER

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I have been careful when cutting things throughout my entire life, so I am not quite sure how I got to this point. My guess is that it was a mix of distractions, stress and frustration. Distracted as the others were playing a video game, and I was interested in the puzzles, stress as I was already late preparing the food and we were very hungry, frustration as I could not get the slices to separate! And when it comes down to it, I was not even trying to cut something, I was just going to separate them! Of course I have gotten many tips and ideas of how to separate frozen bread slices without damaging your fingers now, like I wont think twice the next time.