Tuesday 11 October 2011

I am a blood donor

I was scheduled to give platelets this Saturday. Yesterday morning, Canadian Blood Services called and asked me to come in tonight, as I was a match. I figured this was a special request, and I agreed to do it, although I said I might be late. I prefer to donate on Saturdays so that I don't have to deal with downtown traffic. I got there half an hour early, actually, by avoiding the Deerfoot. I had cookies until a chair was ready for me. One of the nurses was the one who helped track me down as a match - they were having a hard time finding someone for this particular patient. When someone needs a match, it means that their health is often so precarious that they want to match as many antigens as possible, or reduce the risk of antibodies and clotting. As someone with AB+ blood, I don't have any antibodies to pass on, blood type wise (in platelets, I don't donate any red blood cells). This patient is a woman who is in the Foothills Hospital, with aplastic anemia, and she was born in 1981. As always, I mentally cast some blessings on my platelets and told them to go out and do good things. My own platelet count was unusually high - another nurse thinks it was turkey from Thanksgiving this weekend. Whatever the cause, I was only hooked up to the machine for 55 minutes - a new personal record. Once I got the call yesterday, I began to drink extra glasses of water to juice up my vein. My vein was in a terrific mood today.

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