Blood donor demographics

I always smile at those questions too....I call them the "Soap Opera" questions. Not to make light of the seriousness or necessity of giving. I have also been giving blood donations for years. I also do apheresis donations, where they may take just plasma or platelets or a combination of the two occassionally whole blood thrown in at the same time. They usually always take a double batch of platelets...I must have a lot! When they call for an apheresis donation it usually because they have found someone with cancer with whom my plasma and platelets are an exact match for. I never hesitate to give all I can for that specific person and with apheresis I can donate about once a week if they don't take the whole blood.

I can't even remember the reason I started doing it...it just felt right at the time I guess. I was about 18. I also asked my daughter and son to start giving and my daughter goes rather faithfully, but my son has this fear of needles thing that kind of creeps him out. I encourage people all the time to give if they are eligible. It's just something that I feel is as necessary as getting my dental check up or Pap smear.

Thanks for the lesson, J_B, I missed that the first time through!

Very cool, Lady J. I'm not familiar with that at all. Is it similar to donating blood?

I've thought about doing that bone marrow typing but I've always been too chicken even though I know donors are needed. I understand that those donations are no small feat.

Back when I worked for what was then New England Telephone,
they gave us the afternoon off to donate by plateletphereis.

Back then (70's) it involved a needle in each arm. They took blood into a
machine which spun out the platelets and returned the rest through the
other arm. It took a long time to do.

Once while I was on the table, ther was a courier waiting to drive my
donation over to a local hospital which needed it immediately. No doubt
there that what you were doing was important.

I've also heard that the bone marrow typing is definitely more involved and sometimes rather uncomfortable.

Apheresis is not unlike donating whole blood except that the process takes much longer. I usually allow myself at least two hours. I use what they call a single needle procedure and how it works is once they have hooked you up to the apheresis machine, it draws out a certain amount of blood, separates it into plasma and platelets (all within the machine!) and then it stops the draw and delivers the whole blood back to you through the same needle it drew from. I repeats this process over and over until they have a full donation of plasma or platelets or both and then IF they want whole blood they will draw that at the very last. You watch as one or two or three bags are filled above the machine and once they are....voila! You are done. There is no more discomfort than a whole blood donation, except for the time.

They cover you up with all warm and snuggly blankets and hand warmers and heated body warmers if you need them. Many people do...for some reason it gets very chilly when doing apheresis...I don't know if that is simply because of the time you lie there immobile or the procedure itself, but the warmth is wonderful! They also let you choose from their collection of video tapes to watch while you donate or you can just watch tv if you prefer or neither.

Occassionally you may feel a bit of tingling around your lips, due to calcium depletion during the process but if you feel that, they always give you some calcium tablets and it goes away. All in all, it is easy and painless and the only negative is the time factor.

Ask your blood bank about it next time you go in if you are interested. It's pretty rewarding as well.

The apheresis technique is a two arm donation where you are donating whole blood from one arm into a centrifuge (via tubing) where it is spun down and the component of interest is removed, usually platelets, white blood cells, or just plasma, and the rest of the blood is returned to the donor in the other arm, also via tubing. Donors are restricted to donating 450 mls of whole blood because they can't afford to give up more than that amount of their red cells, but if you get the red cells back during apheresis, they can take more than one dose from a single donor at a single sitting.

Many cancer patients develop HLA or white cell antibodies because of all the transfusions they receive. Once they develop thesse antibodies they need to get HLA compatible platelets or white cells for their treatment. The best way to get a full transfusable dose of compatible platelets or white cells is from a single compatible donor. It takes 6 to 8 regular donations to get a transfusable dose of platelets. White cells are typically left with the red cells on a routine donation so you need to collect special packs that just contain the white cells or platelets with some plasma for these patients. This is done by the apheresis procedure.

edit: Lady J and I were posting at the same time. Sorry for the double info.

Works for me...I think between the two of us, we done good! They have now perfected the process where the majority of donators need only one arm and one needle so you can at least flail the other around if you get bored or change the channel on the tv with the remote!

The reason for the chilliness is that some of your blood
has stepped out for a spin and is now coming back in.

I'd heard that but wasn't sure how widespread it's use is. I've been out of the 'biz for a while.



Right, the blood tends to drop back towards room temp as it's being processed so when it's given back to you it feels icy in comparison to the internal body temp it started out as.

Well now. That doesn't sound too scary. I could do that. I think of such things as good karmic investments.

I imagine that if the blood donor pool is dwindling then these type of donors are pretty rare.

I always have to take Mo with me when I donate and he can handle an hour. I don't know about two hours. He'll be in school in another year or so <gasp> which should allow plenty of time for such things.

Thanks, J_B. I'm an old lab tech but I worked in immunology, not blood typing, and did that quite a bit ago as I changed careers.

I used to give blood fairly often. Well, more specifically, I gave a pint once in a while, say once a year. But I gave 5cc hundreds of times, to make substrate slides for a fluorescent antibody test. I was the tech, and needed to make slides about once a week... there were a limited number of people I could ask to volunteer, so I mostly volunteered myself. And I gave blood as a "normal" for other labs countless times.

Now I'm not so normal, having had breast cancer a while ago. I don't know if that knocks me out of the loop or not.

I also used to take blood fairly often, when I was involved with clinical labs; lotta stories there.

When I was in college (William and Mary) blood giving was big. The fraternities and sororities competed to see who could get the biggest turnout.
At the time you had to have parental consent if you were under 21, so the friendly volunteer would hand you a form and suggest that you "go outside and get get your mother to sign this."
When I was in Army Basic Training (Ft Dix, NJ), we all "volunteered" to donate. One guy turned out to have the rarest blood type and ended up being the tennis coach on some stateside base. The rest of us went to VN. The lucky bastard.

Good Point.

Are you still in Virginia realjohnboy? What a beautiful place.

My brother lives there (for him, he lives there again) and I'm working up a reason to visit.

I think that in the military that donation is still "volunatry" and very commonplace!

When I was in college I don't recall donation being a thing. For instance - I don't remember big recruitments or the blood mobile visiting. I wonder what it's like on campus these days.

If I'm not mistaken he had AB- ...or thats how I read it. There are only one percent with that blood type. I have ABt and its not a common one either.



How many people do know thier blood type?


I am ashamed to admit it, but I have only given once. Afterwards, I got up slowly....and smacked the floor. The passing out and shakiness I felt afterward was not a good feeling...and its scared me out of doing it again. And... I have been a blood reciepient....when your on that end of the stick, its scary also...

Small world, boomerang. I left Virginia several times but came back and I reckon I'm here for the duration. One of MY brothers lives in Portland, OR.

I'll have to check with the college-aged kids who work for me but my thinking is that donating blood isn't very common anymore.

This is definitely on my "things that good people do list."

I do it very occasionally, not nearly enough. After 9/11 was the last time, I think.

When I became deaf, I gave oodles and oodles of blood to be tested at various institutions as they tried to figure out what the heck happened. I had at least three discrete horrible experiences with that -- new nurses/ student nurses (a lot of the places were University/ teaching hospitals) who didn't know what they were doing. Digging around in search of a vein kind of things. And over and over and over again in a ~5 year period.

It is now something that I really have to steel myself for and talk myself through if it's necessary. But not happy about the wimpiness, should do it (donating) more.

I should, perhaps, confess, that my memories of Virginia are tainted. I was but a teenage girl visitng Lexington. Lexington at the time was a small town home to two all male universities. A lot of my Virginia memories center on boys, boys and more boys - boys as far as the eye could see.

Ahhh Virginia. Lovely place.

<pulling my head from the boy cloud....>

I have seen people faint after giving blood donations. I have known people who had so many test run that the swear no one will ever tap another vein. I can empathize with people who don't donate because of such experiences.

And I know I don't have to tell you it is the right thing to do.

And that is not the purpose of this thread.

My sister sits on the board of the Red Cross in her city so I called her with my question. It turns out that the Texas Red Cross (at least in her city, I didn't ask about others) does not handle blood donations so she couldn't help at all.

It just seems strange that I noticed this and that searching around has proved me right. The donation pool is dwindling, its aging; people don't really see it as a thing to do anymore unless there is an emergency.

From what I hear, every day is pretty much an emergency where donated blood is concerned.

The day I went the telephone rang later that night and Mr. B answered. It was the Red Cross asking if I would come donate! Mr. B explained that I had just been in that very day.

They hadn't noticed that I had made that I had made an appointment.

And they really, really needed some blood.

It isn't so much the volume.... I say as someone who mostly took relative smaller amounts of blood, three or four tubes at most, but then, er, once in a while, 50 cc. for certain tests in our research lab, usually from dear Edmund, who had great veins and didn't give a hoot.

You could almost predict who would get faint... the football player type.. and it didn't have, again, so much to do with amount.

It's hard for me to relate, exactly, as I wanted to work in med field early, say, age 12... and read a lot about it, and when I did at some point have to get a shot or have a blood test, I Looked. How can a future surgeon not look? No big deal. Has something to do with the autonomous nervous system. Thud...

Actually, it all had to do with the books that were in the grade school library. One was about being a beautician, which sounded good, and another was about working in a lab, which did too, and made more sense to me as my hair was naturally curly and resisted care, and since my dad was in med school in the twenties and had pointed me very slightly to interest in medicine, at least to the point of even having heard of it..

I've taught a bunch of people to take blood from my veins.
Did you think I was sissy?

Of course, boomer, I agree with you, somehow the need is not understood as much. And I can only guess how much more difficult screening is now.