On today's episode of "I didn't even know I had that inside my body," it's platelets, or a small colorless disk-shaped cell fragment without a nucleus, found in large numbers in blood and involved in clotting. Didn't know that, but platelets are apparently very important in performing surgeries and anything else that involves having to stop bleeding. That sounds...important. I know when I bleed, I usually stop bleeding pretty quickly, indicating a healthy platelet count, I'm lucky. Which is why I leveled up this past weekend from donating blood to donating platelets, "just to see how it felt." Well, it felt.....long and burdensome, and at times jarringly cool. I'll explain. Donating platelets is kind of an ordeal, but American Red Cross (the organization I work with/ have been indoctrinated into and get calls from all the time since I'm a repeat donor, aka blood bank in their eyes) highly recommends it because you can give platelets more often than the every-8 weeks for blood donation. Whereas I'm in and out of blood donation within 30 minutes ( I bleed quick and know the drill) platelets are at least a 2-hour ordeal, even more if you aren't fully hydrated and didn't drink enough water the previous 24 hours (I didn't). That's enough time for a movie! Which is exactly what you can do at a donation center, as that's the "compensation" or "reward" you get for the extra time. Except it's hard to enjoy a movie when you're not chomping on popcorn but instead have 2 needles sticking out of your arms pumping blood into blood bags and the procedure is causing a chilling sensation throughout your body. It's true: I feel like a cool breeze in my bones shifting through my body, but just covering up with a warm blanket doesn't really help; the breeze is coming through the veins. It's weird, but not "painful," just a literally chilling sensation. The needles in the arm, of course, are nothing to sneeze at (seriously, don't sneeze and move the needle) as they're smaller needles than blood donation needles, which sounds like a good thing for the novice but is actually a bad thing when going into the skin because I can really feel the prick, and the nurses have a finer margin of error. Putting TWO of those needles into 2 different also kind of doubles the risk of missing/ causing pain and discomfort, which is what happened to one of my arms, and I had to grin and bear it. Except unlike blood donations, you're not grinning and bearing it for 15 or 20 minutes, you're there for 2 hours. Oh and you can't pee in those 2 hours or use the restroom at all.
Sound appealing yet? I was definitely having buyer's remorse during those 2 hours lying on the bed, but watching "The Crown" on Netflix kind of smoothed it over, until I found out I would have to stay longer than the other lady there who had arrived AFTER I did. That's really devastating, seeing someone else show up later, but leave earlier. It's not a competition, but when there are 2 needles stuck in your arm, there's a little bit of a competition.... to get out of there. My arms fell asleep like 4 different times, and I had to stretch my fingers without moving my arm too far. Princess Diana was being spied on by the Royal Family? Prince Charles had a scandal when his "intimate conversations" on the phone with Camilla Bowles was leaked to the press? Man the 90's in England must have been prime fare for the tabloids, bigger than anything Prince "Spare" Harry and Meghan Markle muster up nowadays. Princess Di was a pretty complicated figure; adored by all of England, strong and capable, but a little too much for her own good.....I can still remember the day in 1997 at my friend's house waking up on Sunday morning from a sleepover seeing my friend's mom sitting on the couch watching the news crying, with the TV airing coverage of Diana's overturned car with her driver and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed.
AND...back to worrying about my arms. That's kind of how it went in the blood donation, the Crown distracted me just enough from what I was doing until it didn't. Finally, when it was all over and the nurse could take the needles out, I felt life reforming in my arms, like my arms finally got their lives back. The platelets themselves look pretty cool in a circular pattern, and they also took plasma (maybe should have told me that before to get informed consent?) which looked like a yellow mass. Hopefully those will help someone, and my narcissistic self believed my platelets would be healthier than other donors and give whoever needed it a better boost since they're definitely health platelets. Probably just hopeful thinking not backed up by science, but platelets are platelets. Afterwards, the nurse presented me with my reward, an honorary, one-of-a-kind... blanket, as if to mock platelet donors being in a shivery mess during the donation. I'd rather have a cool Snoopy t-shirt next time.
Will I give platelets again? Now that the donation's over I've psychologically convinced myself that it wasn't that bad, so maybe at some point I will, but after those 2 needles go in, I'll probably ask myself what I was thinking strapping myself in like an psychiatric patient without being to use my phone (did I mention that? No use of either arm = no phones). No wonder Red Cross needs volunteers so badly...some people might not do this even if they got paid to give.
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