Blood Typing

Have you read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight? (Duh!) Of course you have! Well, do you remember the chapter when they were blood typing in Biology class and Bella got nauseous and she fainted at the sight of blood? Actually, the contrary happened to me when I had my first blood typing.

Last Thursday in my Biology class, I experienced my first blood typing. (Redundant already?)

I’d say it’s one of the coolest days of my life because I’ve wanted to know my blood type for so long. I was so excited so naturally, I volunteered to be our group’s representative. In one group, a student would get his/her finger pricked and then blood typing time! We had the Antigen A and B serum in small bottles. The one was blue and the other was yellow. They were two students ahead of me. When it was my turn, I willingly turned my left hand which is the one that I barely use (I’m right handed) and the ring finger which we seldom use whereas the skin would be sinuous for an easy puncture.

My teacher’s first attempt to prick my finger wasn’t successful so it left a speck of agony, then he tried again and I saw blood… blood… blood …blood… blood.

My blood smelled great. I tasted my own blood once when I was trying to break a Pilot pen into two when I was angry but I ended up cutting my palm. I licked the blood and It tasted like…sweet rust. If you think its disgusting…well that’s not my problem. So anyway, maybe my blood was not willing to flow out of my ring finger because my teacher had to pinch it really hard just to get five drops of blood. On one slide, two drops were placed on each surface. And then on the other slide, three drops were placed on one side and then you would do something really cool to spread the blood all over the slide to see in the microscope. About the two drops of blood on the other slide, we put Anti- A serum on one drop of blood and Anti- B on the other. After a while, both of the blood drops were clotting so it meant that my blood type is AB, because my blood reacted with the Anti A and Anti B serum meaning, they both have the same antigens. I once bought a cute little key chain of a blood pack with the blood type AB but I didn’t actually know my blood type yet. Ever since we had that lesson when I was in sixth grade, I wanted to have the Universal Recipient type of blood. So now that I know that I’m actually Type AB, I’m going to go back to Toy Kingdom and buy another one of that blood pack key chain with the blood type AB, because I lost the one I bought many months ago. (Hmm…)

So that’s that.

Oh yeah! While my teacher was squeezing my blood to the slide, one or two of my classmates who were observing, knocked off the bottle of Anti A serum (or was it Anti B?). The yellow liquid was spilled on the part of the table. I think a 10ml bottle of that chemical costs Php25, 000 and more than half of the serum was spilled.

And also, I realized that I was actually shaky when I already saw my blood. Getting wounded by accident is entirely different from really constricting the blood out of the flesh. Naturally, a ‘first time’ for something like that would be really nerve-wrecking. Some might find it too sissy and funny when someone is scared of blood typing or even just blood but it’s alright to be scared at first since there’s always a ‘first time’ for everything.