Thursday, 6 August 2015
NetworkedBlogs
I've been working with this service to try and get my blog posts to show up on Facebook. This post can be ignored - it is a test only.
Tell The Nurse
Some of my readers may be aware that I am a regular donor of blood products at the Red Cross.
There are essentially three blood products that a member of the public can donate: whole blood, plasma, and platelets. Whole blood is easy - they stick a tube into your arm, collect some blood into a bag, then let you go. Then they take that away, test it for pathogens, separate it into its components, and use it.
Plasma and platelet donation is a little bit more tricky. For plasma, they collect your blood, centrifuge it to separate the plasma from the cells and collect the plasma into a bag. Then they mix the cells with a saline solution and anticoagulant and put them back into the body. This is all done by machine.
For platelets, the process is broadly similar. It differs in the details. For example, the draw-and-return cycle is faster. There are other differences, but they're minor.
I donated platelets yesterday - my second time. Most of the time with this sort of thing there's very little that can go wrong. Donating blood products is one of the safest ways in which you personally can help the community. But something did go wrong.
Shortly after the process started, I started to feel a tingling sensation in my lips. No worries, I thought, this was normal. I felt the same thing the first time I donated platelets. Slightly. At the end. This time it was strong, and almost immediate. Not having much of a clue, I let the process continue without telling the nurse. By the end of the procedure - which took about 80 minutes - I was feeling nauseated and light-headed. With two minutes left to go, I feebly gestured for the nurse.
I had had a reaction to the citrate in the anticoagulant. This is something that happens occasionally, but it would have been totally preventable if I'd summoned a nurse early on. Fortunately, it was not serious. They disconnected the line and lay me flat and I spent an additional twenty minutes metabolising the citrate before they let me go.
If I'd alerted the nurse to my situation early, instead of letting it go, then they could have decreased the amount of citrate the machine gave me and I wouldn't have felt anywhere near as bad as I ended up feeling. This is a lesson for next time, although next time I think I'll simply donate plasma rather than platelets.
There are essentially three blood products that a member of the public can donate: whole blood, plasma, and platelets. Whole blood is easy - they stick a tube into your arm, collect some blood into a bag, then let you go. Then they take that away, test it for pathogens, separate it into its components, and use it.
Plasma and platelet donation is a little bit more tricky. For plasma, they collect your blood, centrifuge it to separate the plasma from the cells and collect the plasma into a bag. Then they mix the cells with a saline solution and anticoagulant and put them back into the body. This is all done by machine.
For platelets, the process is broadly similar. It differs in the details. For example, the draw-and-return cycle is faster. There are other differences, but they're minor.
I donated platelets yesterday - my second time. Most of the time with this sort of thing there's very little that can go wrong. Donating blood products is one of the safest ways in which you personally can help the community. But something did go wrong.
Shortly after the process started, I started to feel a tingling sensation in my lips. No worries, I thought, this was normal. I felt the same thing the first time I donated platelets. Slightly. At the end. This time it was strong, and almost immediate. Not having much of a clue, I let the process continue without telling the nurse. By the end of the procedure - which took about 80 minutes - I was feeling nauseated and light-headed. With two minutes left to go, I feebly gestured for the nurse.
I had had a reaction to the citrate in the anticoagulant. This is something that happens occasionally, but it would have been totally preventable if I'd summoned a nurse early on. Fortunately, it was not serious. They disconnected the line and lay me flat and I spent an additional twenty minutes metabolising the citrate before they let me go.
If I'd alerted the nurse to my situation early, instead of letting it go, then they could have decreased the amount of citrate the machine gave me and I wouldn't have felt anywhere near as bad as I ended up feeling. This is a lesson for next time, although next time I think I'll simply donate plasma rather than platelets.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)