Donation done, thank you for the people who gave suggestions!
I completed my 5th successful donation with the ARC, not my best, but def not my worse. They had to wiggle the needle around in my arm a bit which increased the trauma and uncomfortableness of the area, and they had to switch out the thing they gave me to squeeze cause it wasnt doing its job (was way too tough and made my hand start to cramp so I couldnt squeeze it they gave me something to roll aroundi n my hand instead) . Still beats my worst, and only unsuccessful, donation which was 15 minutes of that and then them piercing the vein so they couldn't even use it after poking my tendon 300 times which is why I always use my left arm now
For better or for worse the extra digging made me a little light headed before the usual when they swap to the test tubes, so they got some cold towels on me early and set me up for success then. From flow start to needle out was ~12 mins (hard to know for sure since I forgot to stop the timer right away), the nurse said I filled the bag in about 7.
Had a funny experience where when they went to test my hemoglobin the machine yelled at me cause it was over the 17gm/dl that their machine will test up to. I do have plans to get that checked out as some point because my values have ALWAYS been high and that might be a problem (unfortunately I do not weight enough for a power red, as much as the vampires would love it with my O- blood type). I have learned for about 2-4 weeks after I donate my hands which are normally cold become normal temp
Now through this sub I have learned about the rare donor program. Is that something that you get signed up for automatically? Do you have to request a special blood test for them to figure it out? or how does that work? Unfortunately the people working today did not even know about the program