A Bucket List Milestone

This week was really exciting. As some of you may know, I have a bucket list and I was able to cross one off this week: I donated blood! For those of you wondering, yes, I have a physical bucket list and I have been writing ideas in it for some time. One of them was to donate blood. So alas, after 5+ years of having that on my bucket list I was finally able to say I have done it!

The rest of the page is blurry on purpose...I also realized I put the wrong day.
I normally put the dates as day/month/year. Oops!

It was a fantastic opportunity and I learned a lot about donating blood in the process. A few facts:

• One blood donation can save up to 3 lives, not including babies which may only need 1 teaspoon of blood
• Donations are only good for 6 weeks after the collection date
• Every 2 seconds somebody in the US needs blood. I'm not sure what the statistic is in Panama. 

The actual donation did not take long. In fact, Robert was sitting in the chair next to me and I was able to fill my bag by the time his phlebotomist had him going (between 5-10 minutes). I was kind of hoping to be able to race him, but that didn't happen. 

The worst part of the process was getting pricked by the lancet to find out my blood type. How do people with diabetes do it multiple times a day? The best parts were that I was able to check something off my bucket list (yay!), and that I think it is special that I may have saved somebody's life.

Now on to the next thing to check off: bungee jumping into a pool of sharks swimming in hot lava.

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