I noticed last week that Glenn Reynolds gave blood.  I was reminded of it by this post over at Misha’s site.

When I was in college I tried to give blood, but it was not successful.  After a few minutes the blood flow stopped.  I had only filled a small portion of the bag.  The technician tried moving the needle, but it still wouldn’t flow right.  By that time I was tired of being stuck with the needle so I gave up and left.  A couple of years later I had a burst appendix.  During my two stays in the hospital (the first for the operation, the second for a bad post-op infection), I had a total of 14 IVs inserted.  The problem was that after a short time (ranging from a few hours to a day), the IV would infiltrate and have to be moved to a different location.  I suppose it’s good that I’m not afraid of needles.

The lesson that I learned from all this is that my veins don’t like having foreign objects inserted into them.  So, as much as I’d like to help out, I won’t be attempting to donate blood anytime soon.  They had enough problems just getting a vial of blood for the lab tests on my last trip to the doctor (and it left a festive purple bruise on my arm for about a week).