Today, my employer held a blood and bone marrow registry drive in honor of an associate who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. I volunteered for a couple hours at the bone marrow registry this morning and then took the five minutes to swab my cheeks to get on the list.
I took a quick lunch then headed down to make an automated blood donation, which is different, offering more flexibility to the blood center to respond more effectively to hospitals. As I understand it, the machine separates the blood into plasma, platelets and red blood cells as a part of the process. Obviously, it takes more fluid from your body than normal blood donation, so they put back saline in intervals during the process.
In addition, they use a needle the size of the tip of a pencil in order to keep from damaging the cells. It sucks. A lot. Especially when they struggle to find a vein, fishing around inside your arm.
But I got it going and was rocking through the donation, occupying myself by playing poker on my phone. The nurse came by to tell me that I was almost done.
Then it all went very very wrong.
First, on the saline return, I started to feel some pain. I looked down at my arm and realized that something was off. I was starting to get a bit of a bubble near the place where the needle was inserted. I called the nurse over, she did something on the machine and then hurried off. The pain subsided a little, but not completely. Another nurse came back with my original nurse and began fiddling with the machine and my arm, chiding the nurse for the amount of tape that she used on my arm. Not a good sign.
The fiddling with the machine and my arm went on for about 6-8 minutes. It ended with my nurse telling me that my vein had clotted up (not as bad as it sounds) and that I wasn’t pumping blood anymore.
This is what we in the business call: FAIL.
There are many things that suck about this.
- The extra time I took was useless.
- I am a universal donor.
- The extra pain wasn’t worth it.
- My 90%-full pint of blood, plasma and platelets: completely useless.
- The nurses did not try to finish by pricking the other arm, instead they gave up completely.
- I wasn’t able to help someone.
Honestly, #5 is the worst one. I feel like I really let down the anonymous person who would have received my blood. It sucks. But honestly, all of those things suck, most specifically #4 and #5.
Who wrote the rule that states you have to provide a completely full pint in order for your blood to be used? It is a dumb rule and really hurts everyone. Can someone explain that to me?
At least I managed to get on the bone marrow donor list, which is really what the drive was all about. Still, it would have been nice to be able to give blood as well.
And technically, I did. Just not enough.
It’s kind of a sad story…but i must admit…i found a little humor in picturing you squirm around in pain while the nurses argued. A for effort buddy!
Almost the exact same thing happened to me with one of those machines. I was thinking it was pretty cool until things locked up and I found out they couldn’t use my blood. The other strange thing for me was that I had a weird taste sensation going on – it felt like someone had sprayed a very weak solution of windex in my mouth. Needless to say, the next time I went back to the regular blood collection method. Even then they had to switch arms to find a vein, but at least I ended up with a pint of usable blood for them.