15/06/2015

12/06/15; 18:13:

Ah, I’ve missed writing! I’m just going to attempt to sum up two weeks, in two separate posts, of course, in keeping with what I last closed with.

It’s been 4 weeks- that’s a month, yes; very honestly, it does not feel nearly like a month, time just flew!

Let’s start right at the beginning of this month- 1st June i.e. Monday began with a long set of tasks to be completed- I actually remember thinking to myself about how Monday had, has and will continue to have only 24 hours, whether I like it or not! I’d previously tried my hand at updating the feedback for the two camps that I’d managed alone and had missed out on mentioning quite a few things- with help, I soon had that figured out and updated previous data accordingly, hopefully, satisfactorily. All donor reaction data was consolidated with plans for me to visit a couple of blood banks and procure the missing data, as the month progresses.

On Tuesday, I headed out to the Blood Bank at Victoria hospital. Once on the Victoria Hospital premises, it took a little while for me to find the Blood Bank- of course the signage helped. I then managed to find relevant persons who then helped me fill in all the missing data. It took about an hour and a half to get all the missing data filled in-donor forms needed to be pulled out for certain data that wasn’t down in the register; luckily, I had help from the nice lady at the blood bank. I then proceeded to walk back home, taking in a new part of the city as I went my merry way. I passed Lalbagh Botanical Garden on my way; I spent a large part of the journey he wondering where the fort was, for the road seemed to be called Lalbagh Fort road; I made a few enquiries later and did manage to figure out that I was indeed very close to the fort- a short detour from Victoria hospital would’ve landed me there!

Wednesday morning began with an early morning phone call from the guy I work with- explaining where I ought to meet him, instead of the usual Silk Board Junction, since we were heading to a different part of town. We were soon at the CGI campus in Marathalli. We took the Old Airport road to get there, passing HAL and the Aviation Museum on our way. I was very nicely told about the museum, but a detour to visit was refused. Once at the CGI campus, we spent over an hour waiting for the Blood Bank team to arrive- they were stuck in traffic and then managed to turn down the wrong road even though it was a fairly simple route to the CGI campus. The donation camp started an hour off schedule; we had a team of volunteers from CGI who helped out with the registration process and more- of course, there were certain points through the day when we had a large bunch of volunteers hovering around the registration area and no donors! The camp wrapped close to 7 p.m. but we ended up with far fewer units of donated blood than we’d been told to anticipate.

15/06/2015; 01:03:
On Thursday, I was to head out to JLL at UBCity- the office was on the 3rd floor of the Concorde building; the entrance was right through the mall which boasts an array of luxury brand stores. As I stood looking for the entrance, I happened to look around and up, at the United Breweries building- a tall, imposing glass building that just seemed to rise up and out of the earth below- watching, with a slight whiff of arrogance, over the traffic on the road going past; smiling, but not quite at the people that looked up in awe and but annoyed at the few who dared to swing past its vast doorway and step in. I made my way up to the office and subsequently to the drive venue which was a rather small conference room- of course, the organization was a small one and this would suffice- a small meeting room on the right of the farther door of the conference room served as the pre and post donation area. It was rather curious to note that each room in the office had a nameplate- and the theme was the areas of Banglore; so, getting to Whitefield from Koramangla doesn’t take all that much time! The blood bank team got to the venue almost an hour after their scheduled arrival and the camp accordingly started an hour late; they very nicely extended the camp for an hour on the other side, so, that kind of took care of itself. All donor pickings were done by or under the supervision of the senior technician of the team. There were two guys, both of whom experienced slight pain in their arms when donating- we had to discontinue donation for one of them; the other felt pain after donation which I suppose was more psychologically driven than anything else. We explained to them that donor reactions are a very real phenomenon- and occur in 3 to 5 % of the people who donate blood- and are not a cause for concern- also a reaction one time does not in any way imply a reaction in the future- it is perfectly safe for them to continue to donate blood in the future. Both persons were willing to donate blood again, immediately, from their other arm! A couple of donors even came down from JLL’s other campus at Embassy Golf Link. Somehow, we had only a solitary woman donor, through the drive.
During the course of the day, the whole team at one point helped themselves to coffee- I didn’t really feel too keen on the milk and on the HR manager (company contact)’s insistence got myself hot water with a citrus flavoured tea bag- this was the moment when I discovered that I don’t enjoy ‘Indian masala chai’ only for the sweet and the milk but for the actual flavour of the tea! And, that’s a pretty interesting revelation- perhaps I’ll get hold of tea-bags in Indore too!

On Friday, i.e. 5th June, I made my way to Rashtrotthana blood bank in Chamrajpet (not too far from Victoria hospital). Very warm greetings were exchanged, the moment I got there- I was soon rummaging through donor data from the end of 2014 to present. Rashtrotthana collects a very large number of units of blood a year and accordingly, their data ran into register after register- for data dating to before November 2014, we made our way to their storage area where most of the missing data was then found and filled in. They were to hold an organ donation mela, the next day and preparations were in full swing, in the auditorium on the 1st floor. The donor weights were missing for 7-8 donors- this would’ve required sifting through boxes upon boxes of donor forms- the people there are really nice and offered to send in the requisite data as soon as they get around to the task!

Saturday was spent at ESI hospital- I got to their campus pretty okay, taking a bus then sharing an auto to get there- it was once I was on the actual campus that I got lost. I must’ve asked at least 6-7 people before I was finally able to gather that the blood bank was down below, in the basement! Once there, I got the data and was done filling in all the requisite information in lesser time than it took me to find the blood bank! A person had strolled into the blood bank, to attempt to donate blood, while I sat filling in the data- of course, till the doctor got to him, I took it upon myself to ask him a set of questions that are necessary to ascertain that a fixed set of prerequisite conditions are met. I was soon out and on my merry way back. I decided to walk down till Majestic (which is the main bus depot here, right next to the inter-city railway station). A bus, on its way to Majestic passed me by, just as I strolled out of the hospital gate. As I walked along, I chanced upon a rather long, winding chain of traffic which I happily walked past. Soon, I was at Majestic, way ahead of the same bus!

Sunday was spent catching up with a friend from Indore who’s also in Banglore. All he wanted to do was eat pasta- yet, the place we ended up meeting at was one that makes a variety of food- everything other than pasta! And, that’s week 4 in Banglore at a close; I should document out week 5 before week 6 ends too!