Needles, Blood, and Donation

As me and my friends got out of class, excited to finally head home, a discrete blood drive table caught out eyes. (This was back towards the end of Sept.) In high school there were blood-drives held as well, but for whatever reasons, I never actually committed to one even though I had always wanted to. When I saw the opportunity, I felt it was finally time for me to suck it up, and officially sign up. I was happy to not be lazy and take the step to donate blood, and even got a mens shaving gel? as a reward for signing up! It was a weird prize, but nice of them nevertheless. Anyway, the date finally came, Oct. 6 and we arrived at the drive location. I was given a packet to fill out, with history and information on the process. After waiting a bit, I went to get preliminary tested where my temperature was taken, and my finger was pricked. My friend told me once she was not able to donate because of low iron, and ofcourse after the prick was taken, the results showed my iron was too low to donate as well. I was heavily dissapointed becuase I actually looked forward to donating blood. Unforunately, this discouraged me to attempt to donate again. Maybe when I feel like I have ate enough vegetables or whatever foods contain iron I’ll try again!