
Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister holding a fuel rod for the Advanced Gas Cooled Nuclear Reactors. The type I worked on 1978-1979.
I’ve donated blood many times. I remember the first time. Twenty years old working for the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority, I felt so special. I felt brave and proud volunteering while other students working there said they would not do it.
Its painless, quick, fairly safe and each time, when I used to give blood, I felt good getting special attention from the healthcare workers.
That changed just a few years ago. I am about 90% sure the needle/cannula inserted in my left arm hit a nerve or something it should not have hit. Ever since, I have had a slight pain and feeling of weakness from my left elbow to finger tips.
I did not say anything and continued to attend blood donation sessions. I only stopped when on my last visit every donor was told to drink a litre of a red drink containing aspartame. I agreed to drink but went to the sink in the nearest ‘rest-room’ to fill a cup with water. I do not know if that policy of ‘consume aspartame before donating’ is still in place. If it is, that is very wrong. That is an aside though because I wanted to say about pins and needles (I’ll talk about pins and acupuncture another time) and will share what I just read at:
www.realnotrare.com/post/kristy-frymoyer
“As soon as I got the shot I immediately felt it go from my arm to my chest, then through my sinuses and down my legs. I immediately felt like I was going to pass out. I felt weird the entire night. The next day on October 26th I had a headache and couldn’t see straight so I left work early and laid down. On October 27th I was woken by stabbing pain in my left leg, and as the night progressed I lost feeling in both my feet. I called my doctor when I woke up that morning and was told if I could walk, I’m good. Since that date I have had non-stop chest pains and numbness in both my feet and my hands. My doctor thinks the pharmacist hit the nerve in my arm because my arm swelled under my armpit…”
The records of how many are harmed by needles and cannula seem to be sketchy and confusing.
With intramuscular injections the only side-effect you might expect within hours might be an aching arm. There is a huge problem now though with poorly trained people giving the injections. I have been trying to tell the world that too often what is in a syringe is going directly into blood vessels rather than staying, for at least a while in the muscle. Please click and share this page: www.sharewellness.co.uk/aspiration
Can anyone help with making this page better? We need more people to be aware of these risks especially as more children seem to be getting damaged by poor injection technique.
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Flashback to 1978-1979 and my one year as a student working full-time for the atomic energy research on a British Nuclear Fuels plant. Here are the front gates that I would arrive at every morning, including that morning I describe in chapter 3 of SP/SS.


