I donated blood to save (233) lives in Ghana

Last Saturday, I donated blood to save 233 lives in #Ghana. #giveblood #savealife #233moments cc @nbsghana twitter.com/Abocco/status/…
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 27, 2013

Last weekend, I donated blood for the first time. Well, my blood had been "pulled" before but for checking if I had malaria, etc. I had traveled to Lagos last week but I made sure I was back in Accra before Saturday so I could join the Blood Donation Drives happening. 2 events happened on 23rd February, both supported by Blogging Ghana. 1 happened at the Accra Mall (Clinic) run by the National Blood Service and another at Block A of the Pentagon Hostel at the University of Ghana run by the Rotaract Club of Adentan. STACC was also involved.

I had a lot of work to do on Saturday. So sometime, after 2:33pm, I headed to the mall.

2:33pm in #Accra, #Ghana. Heading to the #AccraMall to donate blood. Hope it doesn't take long though. #GiveBlood & save lives. #233moments
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 23, 2013

I needed for it to not take long, because I wanted to watch the Manchester United game. I am a huge football fan. Traffic had other ideas. I went to the mall cos I thought the blood donation line would be short. My trip was longer, cos the police stopped me for trying to buy some time in getting to my destination. When I told the police, I was going to donate blood, he let me off. Shouldn't he have? :-)

Donatig blood for the first time in my life. Am excited. The lady just told me "You have enough blood fot the donation". #giveblood #morevim
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 23, 2013

I had enough blood for the donation. What else did you want me to hear? Hehe. Nice, I really had a lot to give. But who is Dr. mensah?

"please are you related to Dr. Mensah?" "No, who is he?" "He's 1 of the doctors with the National Blood service". #giveblood cc @nbsghana
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 23, 2013

Oh, him? Yeah, Aba mentioned her name in some of the emails. Big ups to the National Blood Service! They were really professional, calmed down any fears and did their work efficiently and quickly. They gave me this form (questionnaire) I needed to fill before I gave blood. Check it out for yourself, quite an interesting one. :-)

Waiting in line with @qwophicedi to go #giveblood at the #accramall. Those who are done have calmed the anxiety down. @nbsghana
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 23, 2013

Once, the registration were through, the wait didn't take too long. I was there with Qwophi Cedi who was rather nervous. I laid on the bed, they gently 'punched' a needle into my hand and the blood was being donated. I had underestimated how much blood I would be giving. It was taking long. So I had time to....

They are taking my blood as i tweet right now. Am typing with one hand as i #giveblood
— Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) February 23, 2013

 Yes, tweet with one hand. I'm so bloody good at tweeting! I should be named the top tweeter. I wasn't nominated for that but I was for "best blog", so go and vote. My friend Josiah supports me.

@abocco u r bloody good at tweeting then!
— Jkeyison (@jkeyison) February 23, 2013

My friends Seyram, Ali, Qwophi had some good laughs after we had donated blood. We were the Vim donors!

The #vim donors #SaveaLife #GiveBlood Cc @abocco twitter.com/Abm233/status/…
— ☁Ali Maiga☁ (@Abm233) February 23, 2013

Big ups to Edward and Samuel for their hard work on this drive. Blood donations should happen 3 months at a time. To learn more, see blog entries on GhanaBlogging.com and the National Blood Service website. #GiveBlood

PS: Was my blood going to save 233 lives in Ghana? Maybe less. But for the amount of blood they took, it had to cut close to that number. Okay, I exaggerated the number. Let's reduce the sensation to 23...... .3. How about that? :-)