u/HerbalJabbage

Hello all! I'm 34f from the UK, and recently after many years of putting it off, a couple of months ago I decided to try giving blood. Unfortunately, it didn't go very well for me...

I spent time working in rural South America, and this meant my blood had to have extra screenings, which required collecting more than usual for tests.
Finding a good vein to use was difficult, and I had a lot of bruising afterwards.
The bag wasn't filling fast enough so while everyone else was just chilling, I was having to kick my legs around the entire time.
After the donation I fainted, right in the middle of the donation centre! I spent the next three hours lying on a couch, and being given endless glasses of water, and being talked to like a child (in the end it turned out that the nurses thought I was a teenager!) I was aware that I was keeping the medical staff late after the clinic closed.
Over the next few days, I couldn't get up without feeling faint again. This was a bit scary becaue I live alone, and so I was really struggling to look after myself. I ended up having to get further non-emergency medical care.
I just found the whole thing really stressful. I kept replaying it over and over in my head for a while.

The blood was used, but on the whole, I'm not entirely sure I was a net benefit to our National Health Service!

I think that a lot of these problems just come from not being hydrated enough. I knew that I needed to drink more before giving blood, but I guess I just habitually didn't drink enough and I was chronically dehydrated. I've been trying to drink more, and I'm treating it as a learning experience.

I'm really anxious about trying again because the whole experience was really scary and humiliating, but part of me feels like I should be brave and face my fears.

Has anyone else had any experiences of giving blood again after initially having problems like this? Obviously not expecting any medical advice, but perhaps some insight into the kinds of discussions I could have with medical professionals about this woud be helpful!

When I get spammy emails or scams, I'm always really intrigued about what they're after. I was wondering if this one is operating in a way that's familiar to others on here.

So for context, I'm a game developer who is starting to get into short content videos to promote my games, but in the past I've mostly used YouTube to host a bunch of ecclectic things - travel logs, vlogs about creative projects, videos newsletters. I've never been particularly interested in growing my audience because I'm just making videos for fun, and I've only got about 800 subscribers.

This week I received this email from someone under the name Suzie:

> I just viewed your video [Link to my latest video, which was a vlog about a short game jam type challenge I set myself] and thought I had to reach out.

>I am actually emailing you on behalf of fellow creator [A channel of football/soccer tips with 1M+ views], we've got a couple million followers on multiple platforms and our founder [Football creator] is now helping other creators along with our team.

>We're confident we could help make you additional revenue consistently by scaling or launching an online course or coaching program AND increasing your audience by 25 - 35k new people. (I know it's a bold claim but we've got proven results - we've got millions of followers and made over 7 figures with our personal brand ourselves)

>Our other co-owner personally recorded a short video for you to say hello and explain how it works (and asked me to send this message to you!)

This then links to a video, which is three minutes long, and involves a screencast of someone (the supposed business partner, not football guy, not Suzie) looking at my channel and clicking into all my silly little travel logs etc. It uses lots of social engineering tactics - it's praising my channel (without any specifics) and saying how he just HAD to get in touch with me, he doesn't normally do this, most people get back in touch with him when he does this... etc)

Of course, his webcam mysteriously isn't working, but if I schedule a call with him, he can definitely increase my income by "an extra 10,000 to 50,000 dollars a month" and "with a results based model where if you do not profit, we do not profit."

The voice sounds like a real person but I kind of hope it's artificially generated because it's wild to think there could be some guy who spends his day recording three minute long screencasts of random people's YouTube channels.

So I guess this is just me reminding people to be careful out there and wondering if anyone else has run into this?

I had a really bad experience - should I try again?