Originally Posted by
seypat
Just my 2 cents.
I'm type O blood. I donate platelets every 2 or 3 weeks. Sit on a Trima machine for 87 minutes squeezing a stress ball every 3-5 seconds during the draw cycles. By the end of the 87 minutes, the muscles that control that movement are so pumped up that I can't squeeze the ball any more. Can't even make a fist. That movement is very similar to using a brifter to shift gears. ...
Good for you! (My post here is totally off topic. Skip it if you are interested in the OP's question.) You are taking my place. I donated every two weeks in Boston in the early days; late '70s. Resumed donating in Seattle late '80s. Shifted to 5 pairs of donations, platelets, then a week or two later, whole blood 5 times a year. (It was becoming obvious I needed to limit the needles.) In the 90s I started making a point of requesting the most experienced nurse or tech in advance and got to know their names; the ones that were very familiar with scar tissue. 18 years ago, Portland Red Cross's best whole blood nurse told me I should quit donating, that my veins had had enough. So I'm done. Roughly 75 each platelet donations and whole blood. A whole bunch of needles. (Now if the Red Cross had invested in one-arm machines with kinder needles, they'd still have me donating. Oh well. Thank you for doing this.
When I started doing platelets, it was a different world. First, the machines. All mechanical. The centrifuge was right beside me. A glass bowl under glass and I could watch my blood being spun. No pumps whatsoever except to get my blood up to the return bag overhead. I had to donate a full 5 pints but I was a bike racer and could fill the bowl fast! I'd watch the drip from the overhead bag and tell the nurse to go faster or slower based on how I felt with the sodium citrate. (I punched a time-clock those days, It was money in my pocket to show up at the Red Cross late.) I made it a point of pumping fast and getting the return back as fast as possible to never be the last off the machine. Those manual machines were fun! And the nurses loved us donors that were into them and kept a good eye on what was happening.)
The other gift was that the confidentiality barriers between donor and patient didn't yet exist. Most of my platelets went to research,l but when I was paired up with a (usually) leukemia patient, I would learn their names, hospital and room number and get an update on their condition every 2 weeks. (The nurses paid them visits.) I never went but I knew I could. Many years later I went to Puget Sound Blood's annual thank-you banquet for volunteers and 100 plus donations donors. (PSB has a wall with an engraved tree with gold leaves. 100 plussers get their name engraved on a leaf.) Listened to a 19 year girl thank us for the massive amounts of whole blood she needed for a (heart? liver? My memory's failing) transplant for a genetic condition that saved her life. I thought back to those I had helped and felt chills of gratitude.
The other gift I got every once in a while as a complete surprise in those earlier days - heartfelt hugs from strangers. Family members of cancer patients who knew how much I was helping (better than I did).
One reason I don't want to totally kill my veins - if I can ever donate bone marrow, I want the veins to make it possible. I have helped bone marrow recipients with my platelets and wanted to do this for 40 years. If I get the call, I'm all in.
Ben