Saturday June 28th was the scheduled date. There being a whole day and since Hulk was being screened, everyone that could come early met at Majestic City to watch the movie before the donation.The general view was that it was an excellent movie. After the movie most of the others joined at Majestic City with two more of us meeting up at the Blood Bank at Narahenpita itself.

The National Blood Transfusion Centre was a nice modern building. The staff there were very friendly and quite helpful during the entire procedure which consisited of a few steps. After asking each of us what our blood types were, they singled out those of us with the blood types B+ and O+. They told us that this was because these two blood types were most in demand and they wanted to do a new procedure called Apheresis. This would allow them to take more blood and also a smaller recovery time. The downside was that this takes a lot longer than a regular blood donation.

The steps were the same as any other blood donation. First we had to fill out the relevant forms and questionnaires, then we were taken to a separate cubicle where a doctor checked our blood pressure and our general health. After this we had to wait for sometime till they got the equipment ready. Once they did, the bulk of the clan had the normal blood donation while the "lucky" few were hooked up separately to an Apheresis machine. While the regular blood donation took a few minutes the apheresis took around an hour to complete. 

In the end it was a good outing and everyone went away feeling a little better about themselves and with an idea to repeat the process as soon as possible. Special Thanks to the Doctors and Nurses who took good care of us and explained everything as well