Friday, April 3, 2009

Blood, Sweat and Lightheadedness...

Last night, went to class and and was all ready to put in a good workout.

Well, as I've told you before, we work out for about 45 minutes before we actually do any martial arts. I was feeling strong - working out all my anger at my husband for standing up our 10 yo son again. (He was supposed to pick him up from karate but didn't show...long story...but if you read my blog you know the background - I won't go into detail) But suffice it to say, I was really disappointed in him and disappointed for our son. Okay, I was mad...seething mad.
Like I said, I'm in the middle of my iron woman marathon workout and I'm sweating buckets, but I usually do sweat alot so it didn't really worry me...still feeling good. Then, right near the end, I started feeling shaky and started to get that kind of "white-out" feeling you get behind your eyes when you get lightheaded and feel like you're going to pass out. Now I am wondering if it's just the emotions getting to me coupled with the working out. We take a break. I come back feeling fine again.
We start our walking kick practice. First roundhouses. One off front foot, the other feigning a low kick but then going for a higher roundhouse. After two times across the gym, the sweating and "white-out" feeling returned. I handed my target pad off to Sensei and said I needed to go sit out, which I did.
About 15 minutes later, I noticed Mack (I mentioned him and his encouragement to start martial arts training in one of my very first posts.) was on one knee and a few people standing around him. Next thing I knew, he was sitting next to me. We shared experiences of how we felt. He had the sweats and shaking but not the lightheadedness.

Another 10 minute into our conversation, Mack says he has figured out why he got to feeling this way - he had given blood the day before. I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the awful bruise I got from 1-1/2 days prior in donating blood myself. We started laughing because we realized that was the reason we both felt like that. One of our instructors was taking it easy that night, and Mack pointed out that, he too, had given blood the day before.
I should have known that giving blood could do something like that but didn't even think of it. Beyond that point, I waited over 2 hrs to give blood and at the almost full level in the bag, my vein clotted and they had to move the needle around a lot to try to get it flowing again. No go. But talk about a nasty bruise. It's about 3" in diameter and is a pretty burgundy color. You can actually see (and feel) the raised puncture mark because the woman rotated that needle around so much trying to get it flowing again.
After all was said and done, since I was a few drops short of a full bag (no jokes there - you know, few bricks short of a load, etc...) I was told my blood could not be given to a person because it was not a full bag. They would use it for research & testing. All that and this pretty bruise too.
But it was still worth it. And I would do it again, and probably will. I just won't do it on the day or two before karate class!

2 comments:

Meg said...

That will definitely leave you light headed! Did they advise you to drink a lot of water afterwards?
I hope the bruise heals quickly and I certainly hope the light-headedness is resolved.

Perpetual Beginner said...

Interesting. Giving blood doesn't make me light-headed, even with a heavy workout. It does, however, screw up my fine motor control big time. Piano practice really sucks for about 24 hours after a donation.

It's not a problem for me any more though, they don't want my blood even since I had a false positive on a Hep B test about ten years ago.