 Hello and welcome back to another vlog. Thank you so much for tuning in as always. My name is Claire Carmichael and I'm a newly qualified general practice nurse. I'm ashamed to say I'm 36 years old. I am a nurse and I have never ever given blood. This was my first time and there's always been, well there's a mixture of two things. Firstly, I'd never really thought about it before. I know the message is out there and maybe the message needs to be out there a little bit more and people need to raise awareness a little bit more I think because I didn't really think about it until probably a few years ago and I thought maybe I should give blood. That's a really good thing to do. But then I had tattoos, I had piercings, I'd go away on holiday. So there was always something that would stop me from giving blood but then that's down to me as well because if I really, really wanted to I would prioritise that obviously. So I think for me I need more awareness I think and this is why I wanted to do this vlog to raise a bit more awareness about how important it is to donate blood and actually how un-painful and actually fine it was as well. Spoiler alert, it was okay. But on Sunday I gave my very, very first blood donation. I couldn't vlog when I was in there. I couldn't because of the people that were around me. I didn't want to break confidentiality, anything like that. So I didn't vlog when I was in there but I did take a picture. It's coming up now so please if you're squeamish look away for a split, four seconds I will put this on for just to show that I did do it. I was there. But yes, this was my blood donation. Now I have to warn you this looks ten hundred million times worse than it actually is. I think because when she went into my vein and this happens to me as well because I take blood sometimes if your vein's quite juicy vein and you go in sometimes the blood squirts out as you go in. I think that's a good sign because you've got good juicy veins I suppose. So that's why it looks a little bit worse because when she went in a bit of blood squirted out and it's on my arm so it looks way worse than it was, it wasn't that bad I promise. So what happens when you give blood? Firstly you register. Download the app. I'll put all the links below. Download the app. Register your interest to donate blood. There's a whole load of dates and times to pick from. They may be weeks and weeks and weeks in advance. I had to wait I think about three months for my blood donation because it was so full. Obviously it gets so full because they haven't got that much space to do the blood donation so only so many people can go at once and they only have certain days and times that they do it. So it looks like a lot of people are given blood but actually realistically not many people are given blood if that makes sense. So please sign up it's worth the wait, please do it. Register today. Next you will get some updates. You will get some text message updates from them just to remind you to sort of motivate you. It motivated me. Then you will get a form through the post. You fill this form out and you hand it in when you arrive and a letter just as a reminder as well and just some preparation things to do before you go for your blood donation. So things such as make sure you eat in the morning. It's not a fastened blood test. Make sure you eat, make sure you stay hydrated. So I prepared the day before and this is something I always do if I'm going to have a blood test or something like that. So if you really struggle with blood tests and they can't find veins and stuff like that just a little tip that it doesn't always help but nine times out of ten it really does help. So the day before you want to start getting hydrated drink as much as you physically can without overflowing your veins. You don't want to overdo it but just drink a lot. You don't want to be just drinking one or two drinks a day. That's not good. You want to pump them veins up, get them ready, make sure you eat on the day of your blood test or your blood donation. Make sure you're drinking plenty of fluids, pints and pints in the morning before you go. I had two big mugs of tea. I had a glass of squash like a half pint of squash and then when I arrived, I also had my breakfast as well and then when I arrived at 9.40 they gave me a pint of squash to drink as well and some biscuits and stuff so I did that as well. So I really overdid it I think because I wanted to be prepared for my blood test so that's what I did. So make sure when you go for your blood test just prepare yourself. Make sure you eat, make sure you drink a lot. Just really prepare yourself and your veins but not only that it's going to help you maybe stop from passing out because it is a lot of blood they take and a lot of people do feel a lot faint and queasy and I actually felt fine after mine and I think that was the preparation side of it as well as the mental state of it. I know a lot of people have needle phobias, blood phobias, trust me I've seen so many people faint when I've taken their blood even the people that say that they're okay with needles I've seen faint it's so common it really really is so please don't be embarrassed or worried that this might happen to you because if it's going to happen it's going to happen but just prepare yourself for it and make sure you're eating and drinking and that's why they have a lot of snacks on site as well just to get those blood sugar levels up and yeah you'll be okay don't panic. So on arrival you will get to a little desk you will register they will make you sit in a waiting area because of Covid at the minute I sat in a different room everything was like separated we had all this distancing in place it was really really well organised actually so I had to sit in a room I drank my pint of squash I had some biscuits and then I fell out of form because I couldn't find my form I know I had it planned I still can't find it I've put it somewhere so safe I can't find it so I arrived I had to fill out the form so I just filled out the form drank some squash and then they took me through they went on to the computer system so you will sit with a really nice healthcare professional who goes through all the questions for you they will double check your identity so check your name address date of birth make sure you are who you say you are you're not just giving blood for somebody else I don't know why and all do that but um yeah that just they've got to put in these checks people are strange sometimes and then they will take you to a little private booth where they will do a fingerprint test which wasn't too bad actually I was really dreading it because I know they can hurt quite a bit but actually it wasn't too bad they put a drop of blood into this solution I still have no idea what they do I'm not very good with bloods honestly so they drop it in and they're measuring how long it takes for it to sort of sink to the bottom to judge your blood and if it doesn't sink then they have to do the second test which I had to have of course I did so they drop the blood and it literally just sat on the top and I was like what does this mean I don't know what this means and then they said oh we just need to do a second test to check your hb and they said as long as it's over 125 it's okay so mine was 127 so I was like great okay that's good so luckily I did give blood thank god and then once all that is okay they take you round to the chair when a chair becomes available it's not if it's not available you'll go back into the waiting area again and then when a chair comes available you go you sit in the chair they prep you all up they check your identity again ask your name address date of birth there's quite a lot of checks that goes on which is nice assess your veins that's the first thing they have to do is assess whether your veins are good enough for blood donation because if you've not got good veins you're there for quite a while you're there between five to eight minutes they say giving blood so your veins have to be good enough for them to get the vein in the first place and yeah it's got to be a good flow and stuff like that so they have to assess the veins how big they are how juicy they are if they bounce like when you tap them do they bounce if they got a good bounce which means you've got a sort of a good amount of flow of blood but yeah anyway they assess your veins if they're not good enough you're out of there you can't donate blood you have to come back another day and do 101 things like drinking more and stuff like that to try and get your veins good enough and yeah but my blood it kept um slowing down and the machine kept um sort of beeping so then she was like you need to do the exercises so you have to do this when you've got your arm like that in there and you have to sort of squeeze your hand like this and then they give you exercises to cleanse your bum and your thighs and then release slowly and then clench and then release i'm doing it now why am i doing it now and they give you other things that you have to move your feet like this and lift a leg and lift a leg and then lift both legs all things like that but as i was doing that i think i wasn't thinking about my arm and i kept moving my arm and possibly that's why the machine kept slowing down that's my theory so in the end i just had to lie there like just concentrate on the blood concentrate um but it was okay in the end i managed to get the full bag and i'm so chuffed that i finally did it and then she took it out and it was fine i was fine i felt fine afterwards everyone was so lovely as well they constantly check on you constantly say thank you as well for your donation it was just such a nice experience and i know people don't really think of blood donations as a nice experience but it was nice it made me feel good and everyone was so thankful for your donation as well everyone was really friendly and lovely and after your blood donation you'll be asked to take another seat so you have to wait for about five to ten minutes just to make sure that you're okay you're not going to pass out anything like that drink the tea coffee juice that they provided the crisps the biscuits chocolate whatever they provided have because you need to make sure that you're okay before you leave that room and replace those fluids that you're sort of losing if that makes sense afterwards my arm i think my arm hurt more after i mean you feel it go in when you um when they initially put the needle in it's like if you've got your ear pierced or your nose pierced or anything like that you feel that sharp but it's literally seconds once it's in you don't feel it so you just sort of lie in there like i don't know if anyone else is the same but i couldn't feel anything once it was in it was just that initial quick literally seconds to save a life is nothing so please don't let that put you off at all um and then afterwards it felt like um felt like i've been at the gym and i've been doing weights on this arm because my whole arm was aching and it felt where they took the blood just felt a bit bruised but that was it and it felt like that pretty much for the rest of the night until the next day the next day it was fine it was like nothing had happened and literally i had the tiniest i mean you can see it now that's literally all i've had when i took the plaster off and i looked and i was like is that it come on guys i looked and i was like this is pathetic come on i was expecting it to go really bad because i bruised really easy but actually that's nothing for me that's nothing i fully expected a lot worse and i know some people do bruise a lot worse as well afterwards so if you do get bruised don't worry about it it's normal and i found out that my blood group when you go you find out your blood group sorry info guys i found out and be positive which is amazing and then i read into actually only eight percent of people that give donations or be positive does that make sense so be positive people only eight percent of us give donations so i looked at that and i thought you know what i now i need to give blood because there's not so many of us giving blood and that really put that into percent and that really put that into perspective for me so now every 16 weeks females you can give every 16 weeks so now i'm going to be giving blood every 16 weeks knowing those stats and knowing actually it was all right it was literally nothing so i'm going to give blood every 16 weeks guys save a life so yes that be positive status really cheer me up like that is the perfect blood group for me be positive that is me i am positive yeah so the second part of this video is all about some little facts about blood donations why your donation is needed and hopefully it's going to give you the motivation to register today it's not that bad guys just do it go on so the nhs blood donation people need at least 400 new donors a day and around 135 000 donors a year to replace the people that can't donate anymore they also need 40 000 black donors to meet the demand for better matched blood they also need 30 000 new donors with priority blood such as o negative every year and more young people really need to start signing up to give blood so that we've got more blood donations for the future the two rarest and the most high in demand blood groups are ab negative and r o subtype with only around two percent of donors that have these type of bloods and the demand increases by 10 to 15 percent each year for it so there might be some things that stop you from giving blood so if you've been unwell recently and with covid it's going to be even harder if you've currently got a cold flu if you're pregnant you've got a long-term condition if you're currently taking any antibiotic you've had any sort of medical treatment recently or if you've been for a big operation at the dentist some parts of travel as well so if you've traveled outside the uk you need to make sure that that's not on the list of you can't donate blood if you've received a transplant or a blood transfusion yourself if you have had acupuncture in the last so many weeks then you can't give blood but if it was like a few months ago then it's okay and in november 2017 i'm pleased to announce there were some changes so that men who have sex with men can give blood now so we need more blood donors absolutely 100 get out there register today give blood it's an amazing feeling as well i've got a text message i'll put the text message here actually i've got a text message as well to say that um i had my blood group and like my blood was being processed for somebody so it was just amazing to think do you know what that was really quick i've only just literally given my blood this week like within days i've had a text message to say it's been used and it was just amazing so chuffed that i finally did it not only was it my new year's resolution but it's a really good thing to do it's saving a life you are literally saving a life and i always said do you know what my mission is before i die i want to save a life and to know that i may have possibly saved a life today is just incredible and if that doesn't motivate you i don't know what will don't be selfish go give your blood save a life