Giving Blood

I’ve been meaning to post on this for some time, I’ve just haven’t gotten around to it. Anyways, because we needed to renew our visas for another semester we had to have another AIDs test done. Obviously, this required us to go to the hospital and have our blood drawn. All I can say is wow that was an experience. Of course, nothing bad happened but it didn’t exactly raise my opinion of Russian health services.

When we arrived at the place, we entered to building and found our way up to the place we all thought we would be giving blood. I stress the word “thought” because our group was rather surprised when our resident director came back with several empty test tubes and told us to head back outside. Let me explain how this works. When you need to give blood, you must first go to the building where the do the actually testing. There you receive a test tube which you have to take outside and across the road to another building. In this second building, you have to buy a pair of booties to put over your shoes. Then you walk down to the room where they draw blood. After waiting in line, you put on your booties, grab your test tube, and head in. Once inside you seat down, get poked, and your done. The nurse fills up your test tube and this you yourself take back to the room in which you got it across the street in the other building. Ok so who and spot the major problem with this little system? Anyone? Don’t be afraid just shout it out.

If you said that it was having to buy the booties in order to get your blood drawn, no I’m sorry that is incorrect. Don’t worry this is a tough answer; it’s actually the fact that you yourself take your blood outside to the other building. Hmm, what could possibly be wrong with that? Not to mention that this is a blood test to find out if you have AIDs and whether you should be given a visa.

Ya so, that was interesting, it definitely was an experience, a pretty amusing one too.