Donating Platelets

Retired people become less useful.  Invitations to offer an opinion on new treatments still come my  way but clicking the Retired Box results in an automatic exclusion.  What I have been able to do more, something highly valuable to anonymous recipients in great need, has been to share my CMV negative platelets to assist some of the chemotherapy patients who often develop thrombocytopenia.  While we now have Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor for low leukocyte counts and Epogen to restore red cells, a means of stimulating platelet restoration chemically has been elusive.  Selective transfusion remains a core intervention for recovery. 

While I had been a periodic whole blood donor for many years, prompted mainly by the transfusion insurance a single blood donation once a year would offer my family, once notified that my CMV negative platelets had special value, I made a point of donating four times a year, receiving a 50 donation pin within the past year.  It meant scheduling  this first thing Saturday morning each quarter, for which I would then reward myself with a ride to Lancaster or some other mini-afternoon journey an hour or so away.  This past year, the blood bank expanded to Sunday hours, and with retirement I could go any day.  Rules limit donations to biweekly but so far I've just gone to monthly for the first time. 

Technology has changed.  Traditionally they made the donor into a temporary quadriplegic, tethering me to a recliner with metallic IV's in both antecubial fossae.  I once asked the hematologist in charge, who I knew from my practice, why they needed both arms and metallic access.  Eventually it became a single site for both extraction and return, though the failure rate was much higher and my left hand was a lot more sore that way.  It also seemed to take longer, so after three misadventures I returned to one access to take the blood and the other to return the red cells.  This has worked well.

Incentives have come and gone.  The emergence of Mad Cow Disease and AIDS excluded many potential donors who had potential exposures from living in England to using animal derived insulin for their diabetes.  More people are anticoagulated these days and people take cruises that innocently allow them to stop at a port where the inhabitants might have malaria or Chagas disease.  We also have more people with cancer surviving longer but at the price of toxic treatments.  Thus more need for blood products as the donor pool contracts.  But as long as it is safe for people to get what they need from me, I'm on the list.

They used to offer to screen donors for diabetes with a random glucose taken from the donor plasma or serum.  Rules require eating within three hours so a random glucose in the intermediate range is of limited utility.  RBC collection would allow a hemoglobin A1c which can be drawn randomly but the test is a lot more expensive.  The program stopped a few months back.  For a while my house started to look a little like a Blood Bank Museum with some t-shirt, tote bag, umbrella, or baseball cap either following the donation or by redeeming accumulated points.  That program comes to an end soon.  More disruptive to the blood bank than it's value in enticing donors who usually have a better justification for participating than receiving some kewpie doll with blood bank logo. 

I'm sore, being recently comforted by naproxen once or twice a day for lumbar pain.  In order to donate, this needs to be set aside for three days, and to be sure I usually stop five days in advance.  But the recipient would be in jeopardy without the platelet supply so I can use some icy hot lotion or stretch for a few days.  There's naproxen in the car, first pill resumed on the way home.  And I got my outing and perhaps a small recurrent mitzvah, though it would be unthinkable not to provide this to somebody in need.