When I gave blood last December, I was asked if I'd consider doing
platelet and serum donation on an apheresis machine. I agreed to
this, so they took an extra vial at the time so my platelet count
could be assessed.
Well, it seems the count was acceptable, and last week they called
me to set up an appointment, which was earlier today.
The pre-prep was exactly the same as for whole blood: take temperature
and blood pressure, stick the finger and get a hemoglobin count,
answer a questionnaire. (I noticed that they asked for my "approximate"
weight.) I wasn't sure why they needed the hemoglobin count given
that they weren't going to take red blood cells, but whatever.
I was on the tail end of a niacin hot flash, so I was interested
to see that my temperature was 97.2 -- I *felt* warm, but really wasn't.
The donation itself took place in a different room. This one had
fixed chairs rather than recliners, and each had a television in
front of it. The TVs had VCR and DVD units built in, and they had
a small library of DVDs to choose from. I decided on _The Prestige_,
but it turned out there was some problem with the sound on the disc.
(They all seemed to have been recorded from a pay-per-view channel
rather than being commercial discs, except for a few from Netflix.)
So I settled for _Rise of the Silver Surfer_, which I hadn't seen.
The donation process takes a long time, about 90-120 minutes, and
immobilizes both arms so you can't turn the pages of a book or
magazine. Perhaps some people bring books-on-tape.
The pheresis machine itself was pretty large, about the size of a
small cabinet. It had three spindles visible from the top that turned
at different rates, and a flat screen display on a lever arm. During
the donation it displayed the intake and outgo pressure, and time
remaining in the process. And of course there were tubes attached to
needles, with a drip bag attached to the outflow, putting in a citrate
compound to prevent the blood from coagulating.
They took the blood out of my left arm and then put it back into the
right. The needle actually went into the right arm first, and they
drew some blood out into that tube to start the process. Then they
hooked up the chemical drip and started up the reverse-flow, so the
blood that came out went back in, gradually getting more dilute as
it went. The fluid started out very dark red and gradually got pinker
until it flowed clear. Somewhere in there a small air bubble went
up the line and into my arm, which concerned me a little, but the
nurse supervising didn't seem to worry and in the end nothing bad
came of it. While this was going on they fitted up the outflow tube
into my left arm, a process well familiar to me from whole-blood
donations.
So I lay there watching the movie, rolling and squeezing a foam ball.
(This latter again something familiar from past donations.) The consent
form I signed discussed possible side effects of the citrate, but the
nurses didn't say anything about it. Perhaps this was to avoid nocebo
effect. They did put a blanket on me when I lay down, telling me
to let them know if I felt cold, and they offered me some Tums partway
through.
I didn't actually feel cold at all, although I did start to feel
slightly numb and tingly in my extremities, and when things were done
I felt distinctly woozy, much more so than I ever have when donating
whole blood. I sat in the canteen for a while, eating some raisins
and drinking lemonade, and after a while felt better. Afterwards
outside my stomach became a little upset, but only for a short time.
I had to have bandages on both arms, of course, and some hours later
when taking them off the pads had rather more blood on them than
the ones do for regular donation...which only seems logical.
It was an interesting experience, but not one I'd recommend to people
with any fear of needles.
--
David Goldfarb |"Come on, characters with super-strength don't
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| *do* inertia! Or leverage."
goldfarb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
| -- Dani Zweig
|
