I've also had donations that couldn't be completed, when the insertion wasn't done successfully. So yes, T Coma deserves just as much credit as anyone else for going in to make a donation. The Honor Roll reflects that.
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MacRumors 2017 Blood Drive!
- Thread starter Doctor Q
- Start date
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Three of my Manchester United friends donated blood today for the bombing victims.
I gave this Sunday afternoon. My energy levels have been dragging all week though.
I wouldn't expect lowered hemoglobin to leave you fatigued for many days. Do you think you're simply under the weather?
It's been happening very time for the last 2 years. I hit the gym at least 5-6 days a week and run at least 2-3 miles at least 4-5 times a week. So no, not under the weather...just getting older (50 this year).
How often do you donate? If your hemoglobin doesn't fully build back up to normal levels from one donation to the next, then you shouldn't go as often.
It's a combination of vein structure as well as actual Platelet volume. I run in the 300's. So I usually do a triple in 75-90 minutes. There is a time lint for how long one can be on the machine. The type of donations needed play a role as well sometimes they can take a but of blood, plasma and platelets. Or one part plasma and two parts platelets.
I'm in the high 300s also, but have smallish veins. The local Red Cross has a slightly flexible limit of 120 minutes for 1-arm and 135 minutes for 2-arm. I almost always am able to give 3 units, but some of the workers there have set the flow rates low in the past given some past problems and I've been a little short of 3 units in 135 minutes.
I've also requested to terminate a donation early before due to biologically reasons-specifically that the saline that they give you as part of the process tends to make some other organ work hard, and unfortunately such things can not be taken care of in the spirit of decency without being disconnected completely from the machine and allowed to visit another room in the building.
I heard of another problem on my last visit that I'd never considered. They have another regular donor who has a platelet count in the mid-500s. They often can only get a single unit out of her as her high platelet count often causes clots to form in the needle.
My father is an avid blood donor. I forget how many gallons he's donated. It's a lot. He's in his 60's now and a couple years ago he became anemic, believed to be caused by donating blood every 2 months. He held off on donating for 6 months and took an iron supplement and has been back on track. Now however he donated every 3-4 months to avoid anemia.
If you're fatigued after donating blood for days on end, it might be worth having a CBC done to check your Hgb and RBC levels. Serum iron, Ferritin, and TIBC tests would also be valuable.
They check iron levels every time I give. My iron levels are fine.
Studies have revealed the prick tests are highly inaccurate, up to 8x variation between a real blood test and a finger prick. That's why some people go to give blood, iron levels look fine, but end up actually being anemic after the donation.
Rapid tests are cheap, easy, and minimally invasive, which is why they use them. But actual blood harvesting is the gold standard in terms of accuracy. Prick tests are somewhat of an indirect iron measurement too, and there are multiple ways to ascertain levels.
I forget what the minimum is to donate, but I know I went in once and initially my hemoglobin(by the prick test) measured too low. I think the might require 12.6 and I measured 12.2. The lady who was doing the screening suggested trying my other hand, and sure enough it measured in the mid-14s(which is where I usually am).
That made me lose a lot of faith in the validity of the test.
BTW, I know that when I donate they usually pull 8 or 10 vials of blood that get tagged and processed with the donation number. I would guess that blood count and iron levels are probably part of the work-up(granted I think most is for infection screening), although I don't know if those values are necessarily relevant for platelet donation. I'd think they would be critical to know for whole blood.
Yeah, it's problematic. Reduced circulation can cause an artificially low reading. Also depending on how much blood is drawn from the lancet needle has also been shown to cause variation. Females especially for some reason have overinflated values. One study showed like 40% of women who tested >12.5ng/dL Hgb with the finger prick had a venous level of <12.5ng/dL.
It makes sense venous levels of Hgb are probably different than the level at the capillary level.
I've been on the bone marrow register for a long time and am also on the organ donor register and I decided to become a blood donor again this month (i did donate blood when I was a student which is a long time ago!). I'm writing this while having a drink following my donation and it was easy and painless 
To close out the month(more or less) I made a triple platelet this afternoon.
The MR Blood drive reminded me to get back to donating after travel deferrals that lasted a few years due to multiple trips to malaria risk countries. Made my 1st two donations since moving to NYC: a triple platelets and a double platelets, both this month.
No no no thank you. A stick in the arm ain't **** and it's actually not a sacrifice at all, even if it worked. Just suck it up and try again later. I look around and see plenty of people who have really sacrificed; so many of us owe a lot just to be back to zero - God knows I do.
No participation trophies please!
That's interesting, my collection center doesn't give me that info. They do however send me the results of my blood screening including my high cholesterol numbers. That's cheaper than going to the doctor for the blood work.
And yes, I'm on statins now. If I could just break my cheese habit...[doublepost=1496269739][/doublepost]
Hmm, we hear the opposite at our center. Women are more likely to have a low iron reading, especially around their, umm, time of the month. My wife is rejected due to low iron about 50% of the time, regardless of the date. Another way to get a low iron reading is apparently to have cold hands too. Last time I walked to the center, it was a little chilly and after feeling my hands, the tech gave me one of those hand warmer packs to knead for a while to get my hands back up to normal temp for that very reason.
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Cold hands results in vasoconstriction i.e. reduced circulation. Mesnstruating women don't have artificially low levels they have lower levels due to the blood loss and lower levels naturally in general.
The accuracy of the test relies on a number of factors including the brand of the test and how much blood is acquired from the finger prick. The latter seems to be the biggest issue in terms of getting reliable results. Too small of a sample yields inconsistent results.
Can I register another whole blood donation? The Red Cross was at my site again today for the 8-week blood drive interval. I was eligible (well, they took me so I assume the computer didn't refuse me) so I dropped off my 16th lifetime pint. I completed my donation around 8 AM, after an hour total in-process, on my way to work.
Oddly, when they called me last week to schedule they couldn't find this event in the system which also means I couldn't take advantage of RapidPass. My BP was AWESOME (110/79), and the guy checking my vitals joked about being worried that my pulse was matching the beat of the music that was playing.
Oddly, when they called me last week to schedule they couldn't find this event in the system which also means I couldn't take advantage of RapidPass. My BP was AWESOME (110/79), and the guy checking my vitals joked about being worried that my pulse was matching the beat of the music that was playing.
Cold external body temperature can also lead to slower-flowing blood, preventing the completion of a blood donation, because the blood starts to coagulate before the donation is finished.
Definitely! Donations that are shortly before or after the month of May count too, as long as they're reported here.
You just can't trust computers, can you? Just wait until they replace the nurses at the donor center with robots!
The Red Cross office where I go keeps a steady supply of warm blankets at the ready. My veins run and hide, so they often will wrap my arm in a blanket a couple of minutes before going in with the needle to get a bit more blood flow through it.
When I went for my very first platelet donation, I wondered why nearly everyone was covered up with a blanket since it was rather warm out side and I thought the room was a comfortable temperature. The amount of saline and returned blood they pump in tends to cool you off pretty quickly.
Wow! We really increased Platelet donations over previous years. Did people start donating platelets because they noticed others here doing it? If so, that's fantastic! Good work Doctor Q and the MacRumors community.