This is a huge, huge life-changing decision that i made in just 2 seconds at Tesco.

There was a blood donation drive near the escalator and there were kind faced school kids in Red Crescent uniforms all over the place, managing registration counters, attending to blood donors and giving out pamphlets. It was chaos at the small area.

One thing i’m proud of being a Malaysian is there are no shortage of blood donors here. Blood donation drives are always crowded with good Samaritans who couldn’t wait to give some blood.

I’m shameful to say that i’ve never donated blood in my life. Not that i’m afraid of the needle, god knows how many times i had my blood drawn by the doctors. But i have this paranoia of catching a deadly disease from unsterilized needles… and it doesn’t help that the sister keeps telling me that donating blood will make me fat because my body goes into an overdrive to produce more blood, even more that before to replace the lost blood. It’s a common misconception i know but hell i’m still afraid of HIV.

Saying that, i have no idea what came over me when i saw the registration counter for organ donation. The boyfriend asked me to wait while he filled up the donor’s form (he had always wanted to be a donor – my hero) and just like that i sat down and filled in my own form.
 

That’s how i became a donor. Someone would get my kidney, my heart, my liver, my blood after i’m dead – i sure hope no one would go to the extreme of terminating me because they desperately need my organs. My eyeballs i’m going to keep. I draw the line at eyeballs. It’s personal.

I had the strangest feeling when i ticked on the organ column to decide what i would donate; it’s like i’m ticking my life away. It’s one of the scariest moments of my life. It’s hard to describe my emotion then, i know it won’t hurt when they harvest the organs because i’ll be dead of course but it’s hard to visualize some stranger cutting into me without feeling terrified. Even as we drove off with the donor card in my wallet, I couldn’t help but think that I had just downright jinxed my life. It’s hard to shake off the foreboding feeling.

I don’t regret the decision knowing i might saved someones life but like i said it’s a huge decision that i made in 2 seconds without taking into account how my family especially my parents would react. I feel slightly irresponsible because i did not discuss it with my parents even though i do not need their consent legally.

If you’re going to be a donor, be prepared emotionally and mentally. It’s not an easy thing to do.