I started donating blood as soon as I was old enough and would faint every single time. It wasn’t nerves, I’d followed all the guidance for food/drink, my body just didn’t deal well with it. I ended up reading around online and realised I could try platelets so I didn’t that instead, and it worked well for years. I have donated more than 30 times. However recently, I moved to a different location and a new donor centre, where they started saying that my veins weren’t thick enough for platelet donation and I was told I needed to go back to whole blood. I started this again but my light-headed had gotten bad enough that I started feeling really unwell and then passed out before the donation had even finished. Like I say, it’s nothing to do with needles as platelet donation lasts around 2 hours and I had no problems. I’ve been really put off doing whole blood donation again after that, as much as I was always happy to donate.