Sheri started working on a problem for work around 2 PM and is still on it at 8 PM. She says it is not going to end any time soon either so I guess I will keep myself busy by writing a few posts I think I have in me.

A couple months ago at work they had a blood drive I participated in. Back in Ohio I tried to be a regular donor but I think I only made it three or four times. I thought about here but never got around to actually doing anything about it. After the blood drive I made a resolution to try and regularly donate and made a little reminder in my calendar 8 weeks out to remind me to donate.

Thursday after work I went to get a haircut. The closest blood donation center to us is just a couple storefronts down from where I get my haircut so I thought I might as well walk down and get that crossed off my list.

Since I already donated once before with them they had me in their database and knew my blood type. I am O+ which I think makes me either a universal donor or a near-universal donor. (I think I might not be able to donate blood to an O- person.) While they were going through their normal paperwork routine she stopped and tried to recruit me to be a double red blood cell donor because of my high-demand blood type. This is where you get hooked up to a special machine that sips a little blood out of you, it automatically spins the red blood cells out right there and then pumps the plasma, a little saline solution and some anticoagulant back into you through the same needle, and then repeats the process until 492 milliliters, about two cups, of pure red blood cells have been collected. The actual needle time was about 30 minutes. I could see the little clear container of my plasma fill up and then get pumped back into me. It was a yellowish color. Because they are just taking my red blood cells they can take twice as many of them than they would for just whole blood.

I think they use pure red blood cells for cancer patients.

On the way home I got cold, my teeth were chattering a bit and I had a few body shivers. I don't know if this was from the donation or I was just cold from not having on a heavy-enough jacket for the weather. They did give me an electric blanket while I was donating and had heating pads under each of my arms, so it was probably a little bit of each.

I was scheduled for 8 AM but they were short-handed this morning so I didn’t get going right away when I got there. They got the machine all set up while I was getting my paperwork done but when I got into the chair the machine indicated a priming fault and they had to uninstall the entire single-use sterile tubing kit, reinstall another and then get the whole system primed and ready again, so that added some extra time to my morning.

With double red cells you have to wait 16 weeks between donations rather than 8 weeks with whole blood.

I want to be able to do something good to give back to the community and society, and volunteering at a nursing home or something like that takes too much time, so this seems to be a good match for me. I don't know if I believe in karma, but if it exists this also has to give me all kinds of points for that too.

They said they have a hard time recruiting double red blood cell donors. I asked how many double reds they get per week and she said the last one they had at this location was about three months ago! She said there are a couple regular double red donors at the location in the city next to ours though.

I got back home around 9:30 AM and Sheri was dressed and ready to go see the greyhounds, but I wanted to lie down and warm up a bit first. That took about 20 minutes on the couch under the comforter.

I had Sheri drive because I felt just a little off. We went to McDonalds and had breakfast inside. I only had a Luna bar and an 8 ounce glass of milk before I donated which is probably why I felt a little off afterwards. I should have eaten more before I went but I was running late. I stayed up with Sheri until 2:30 AM keeping her company while she worked.

We didn't linger too long inside McDonalds reading the paper or anything. I just didn't feel like eating in the car.

We drove out to the greyhound rescue, picked out Mitch, went to the grocery store for football food, drove home, started a fire while Sheri started working, watched the Buckeyes win, and then I took a nap while Sheri continued to work. I woke up, made some food, and Sheri is still working. I think I am going to go bring some more firewood in the house now.