I also bought a Blood typing kit from ThinkGeek, because I honestly have gone my whole life and never known my real blood-type. Rather sad, I must admit. But let's see how I can find out my real blood-type, shall we?





So here's the kit as it comes. It's got a little teeny pipet for water, a package of little plastic dealies for mixing blood drops, a cotton ball for your track-marks, a spring-operated lancet, and the blood card, sealed up in foil.



Interesting card..it's got reagents dried onto spots for mixing your blood onto. First one is Anti-A, Second is Anti-B, Third is "Anti-D" (Rhesus factor), and fourth is a control (This shouldn't react with anything in your blood). I'm actually quite surprised they included a negative control in this kit.



They didn't give me anything to put water in to suck into the wee pipet, so I just used a microfuge tube and my water bottle.



Suck it into the pipet..


And drop onto the little color-coded reagents, careful not to get any on the pipet.



Now, wipe your finger with the included alcohol pad so it's nice and clean.. (be honest, how many of you have your heart-rate start increasing when you get the alcohol wipe? oooooh anticipation)




I choose this finger because it's easy to use and it's already got a nasty scar on it.


Now you pull the pin on the lancet so it's ready to use. I've never seen an automatic lancet before, so played with it a little bit....



...And promptly broke it. I didn't realize that it was a SINGLE-USE automatic lancet, and something inside snaps once you push it down so you can't go around poking holes into people.. Shit, now how am I supposed to get some blood for this thing?



Luckily I wok in a biology lab! I pulled out my little "Is it safe" tray of ..implements for my animal work..



...And found a little insulin syringe I use for undisclosed animal things.


The needle on this thing is like 25 gauge, which is not so good for doing blood things with b/c it can easily shear open the red blood cells. But I wasn't going to jab my beautiful finger with one of the size-queen needles, fuuuuuck that... In fact, fuck using my finger at all. To quote Inception, "We need to go deeper.."


So we're going right into the vein. But how do you tap a vein? I don't have a tourniquet... Oh, I remember, I bought some earplugs with a rubbery pink outer coating! Those'll do nicely (they certainly aren't very good for listening to music)..



Wow, that's rather tight. I still have to hold the end in my mouth like a junkie to keep enough tension to find a vein though. (BTW I hope none of you people are junkies because these photos are a bit....triggering)


Now we insert the syringe until it hits a vein. It took me a couple of tries (I'm out of practice :P ) but I found one. Now we suuuuuuuck a little bit of blood out. Don't need much, just 200 microliters ought to do it.


Ahhhhhh it's nice to get that wire off of my arm, it was pulling my hair out. I clot really quickly so I don't need no stinking cotton-ball.


Now put a drop of blood onto the little mixing-tools (one tool per antigen - don't reuse them)



And mix the blood with the water-reagent mixture in a circle to get the reactions going.





Now just mix it by letting it sit 10 seconds per side, tilting all 4 sides, and then set the card down on the table.



Now you can see how your reactions compare with the possible results...


Wow, look at that! I'm A-positive! I've never been happy to hear the results of a blood-test come out "positive" before but this time it's okay.


But what am I gonna do with the leftover blood? ....


NO MORE PICTURES






So there you go folks! Hope you enjoyed it and aren't craving some smack right about now...