Jumpstart

Earlier this week, I went to give blood with my friend Missy at the Miller-Keystone Blood Center in Bethlehem, PA. As I mentioned in an earlier post (on my other blog), I've been wanting to set up my "year of blood" - an effort by me to give as much and as often in a year as safely as possible. The last time I gave blood was September 27 at the community college that I attend, so it had not been even close to eight weeks when we arrived at MKBC early Monday morning. BUT, apparently I could give platelets and plasma. Awesome.

What was even better was that they were going to take and return my bloods from one arm. I did a double jobber like this early last Spring and had both arms hooked up for over 65 minutes. It was excruciating to say the least. So one arm was a bonus. The procedure normally takes 97 minutes with the one arm, but because I'm super good at bleeding in a controlled/non-diseasey kinda way, my time got reduced to 45 minutes. More awesome. However, I had to squeeze (or pump) every 45 seconds and not squeeze (for red blood cell return) 15 seconds in-between. This was difficult to keep track of because there was only a very subtle change in the screen and sound of the motor of the machine. Sometimes I would forget to start pumping again and the machine would yell at me because my pump pressure was low (or something) and the nurses would scurry over and check everything. I lost 15 minutes because of that, so my final time was about 60 minutes. Much better than 97, but clearly I could have done better.

Throughout this whole morning, I chat with my attending nurse about my "year of blood" idea and she directs me to the wonderful lady at the front desk. Platelets can be given every 8 days and they need a lot of donations. Whole blood is good and all, but according to them, platelets are where it's at. Not only do platelet donations benefit more people in need, but they can be given more frequently. In addition, every 14 days or so, I can donate plasma as well. I set up my next 5 appointments and when I return on 11/22 I'll have my entire schedule for next year set up - all I'll have to do is plug in the times.

I am more than a little nervous, I must say. I have excellent veins for poking with giant needles. While each arm will get a 16 day reprieve, I am still very worried about injury. Right now, in this appointment with danger, only lefty has gone. Righty will have his turn on next Tuesday and then lefty will be back on the rack December 1st... so that'll be my first go at multiple sticks in less than a month. For next time, I'm going to maybe try to do a little video while I'm in the chair.

OH! Side note - Playing with the idea of doing a Spartan Race in June, so while I'm doing all this blood-giving, I'm going to have to start training my ass off. I know I have to be smart about it, seeing as I nearly ended up in the hospital last year because I went to boot camp class EXACTLY 24 hours after giving blood. Though this is a little different because I'm getting red blood cells back... hmmm... research clearly needs to be done.


DONATED: 1 Platelets, 1 Plasma