Finally, they took my red cells

The last couple of times I’ve tried to do the Alyx system at the Red Cross — it’s this deal where they take out a couple of pints of your blood, remove the red cells, then pump it back into you with a little saline — it didn’t work out. Once my iron was too low, the next time it was too late in the day or something. I gave whole blood instead both times, but it was a letdown, because Alyx is pretty cool (literally, since the stuff they pump back into you isn’t quite as warm as what they took out, which might be more than you want to know).

But today, I scored a 13.6 on the iron measurement, which requires a 13.3 before you can do this (the standard for giving whole blood is lower). So I feel a sense of accomplishment.

For months, I had been putting them off, because I just didn’t feel well, starting with that crud I got before Christmas. But I’m pretty healthy now, and I certainly have time on my hands. So I finally got it done.

You should, too. We need the blood here in the Midlands, where we almost never have enough for the community’s needs, and have to import from elsewhere. I mean, you don’t want me lording it over you with how good and fine and generous I am, and you not giving — do you? Because you know, I will do that — unless you stop me by donating.

I’ve given two-and-a-half gallons over the years, by the way.

5 thoughts on “Finally, they took my red cells”

  1. KP

    I’m the universal donor, and I can’t do it. My 16 year old daughter can do it, and I can’t do it. I have veins to die for, but I can’t stand the thought of that huge needle.

    Could they use Lidocain before they stick you?

  2. Greg Flowers

    Giving blood is one of the very best things a person can do. I give as often as I can. The last time I gave I was in the chair having my arm prepped when my cell phone rang. It was the Red Cross asking me to set up a time to donate.

  3. brad

    So now Greg and I both have the moral advantage over the rest of y’all.

    And KP, if I can do it you can. Here’s the column I wrote about my first time:

    THE STATE
    NO MORE EXCUSES. I HAVE FINALLY GIVEN BLOOD. IF I CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU
    Published on: 08/25/2002
    Section: EDITORIAL
    Edition: FINAL
    Page: D2
    By BRAD WARTHEN
    Editorial Page Editor

    “OH, NO, DON’T make me be number 13,” I said as I held a pen poised over the sign-in sheet for blood donors.

    Thom Koenigs, donor recruitment manager for the S.C. region of the American Red Cross, quickly explained that though the line on the form was labeled “13,” I would actually be number 193. He pointed to a scribbled “190” next to line 10. It was thin reassurance, but it was enough to get me to sign.

    I would rather have been anywhere else but at the Red Cross office on Bull Street. To me, this was Room 101.

    “You know what is in Room 101, Winston,” said O’Brien in Orwell’s 1984. “Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”

    “The worst thing in the world,” O’Brien further explained, “varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.”

    For me, it’s to be in a perfectly safe, antiseptic clinic and have a nice nurse in a white uniform deliberately draw blood from a vein.

    It’s not the needle; I get allergy shots weekly. It’s not the blood itself; wounds hold no terror. It’s the pumping, the throbbing, the constricting, the pressure, the release, the flow, the intentional interruption and violation of the veins as they are engaged in their vital work. It’s the very thought of it. It’s the . . . Well, if I go on, I’ll have to drop my head down between my knees the way I did after the blood test for my marriage license. It was pretty embarrassing, but she married me anyway.

    Where was I?

    Oh, yes. I didn’t want to be there, but I was. I had promised. I had put myself in this spot on Monday at Rotary. I had been hearing, despite the fact that I didn’t want to, about the Rotary blood drive for weeks. And here it was the week of, and we were only a third of the way to our goal. So my system was failing.

    My system for ensuring that my community and my nation had an adequate blood supply on hand was to let somebody else do it. This had always worked for me. Whether it had worked for the community and nation was beyond my ken, because whenever anybody tried to tell me about it, I had made loud noises while holding my hands over my ears. This system had worked for me for almost 49 years.

    But it had started breaking down a week or two earlier, when someone from the Red Cross told my Rotary club that the community was down to a half-day supply on some blood types.

    People just aren’t giving in South Carolina the way they used to. As a result, the Red Cross has been importing blood from Charlotte, from Atlanta, from all over the country. We’ve imported more than 12,000 units since January to supply local hospitals.

    Word on the street is that folks aren’t giving because they heard that after Sept. 11, so much blood was given that some was thrown away. Mr. Koenigs dismisses that as a misunderstanding.

    More than 10,000 pints of blood were taken from donors in just the first week after 9/11. In the end, 192 red cell units had to be thrown out. Mr. Koenigs points out that all of the plasma and all of the platelets were used.

    You see, when you give blood, they take it and break it up into components for use in hospitals. So if you gave last September, at least part of your blood was used. It’s just that for a few donors, the red cells were not.

    Not everyone realizes that blood is only good for 42 days. “It’s living tissue,” said Mr. Koenigs. “The cells die.” So it doesn’t really matter how much was given last September. It would all have been used up (or in rare cases, thrown out) long ago.

    In any case, Mr. Koenigs doesn’t see the 9/11 rumors as the biggest problem. “I firmly believe the Mad Cow-travel issue has been the primary reason we have experienced such a decline in donations,” said Mr. Koenig.

    Blood can be (and is) tested for HIV or hepatitis. But there is no test for Mad Cow disease, and the Food and Drug Administration is taking no chances. No one who has spent any substantial time in Europe in recent years is allowed to donate blood in this country.

    In South Carolina, with all of its retirees and present and former military personnel, that eliminates a lot of people. The same middle-class-and-above demographic that is most likely to give blood is also the most likely to have been abroad.

    That means it’s up to us who never go anywhere to make up the difference. And the difference is substantial.

    The period after Sept. 11 was the only time in years that hospitals here in the Midlands and across the country were fully stocked. The last time before that had been during the Gulf War.

    Often, the chronic shortages can be worked around – doctors and hospitals will put off elective surgery, or make do with another compatible blood type (such as O negative, the universal donor type) until the exact match is available. Other times, things don’t work out so well. Two or three years ago, a local patient missed out on a liver transplant because the donor liver was there, but not the blood. “They took the liver and shipped it up to North Carolina,” said Mr. Koenigs.

    As of early Friday, the supplies of O positive, B positive and O negative were at “emergency” levels. “We have called other states for imports,” Mr. Koenigs told me a little after 9 a.m.

    At Rotary on Monday, they had asked us to sign up friends and relatives to give. I decided my system had failed, and I couldn’t ask anybody else to give if I hadn’t done it myself. So I did, on Wednesday. And it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It was OK, in fact. I got a little dizzy, but I was fine after a snack. In fact, I felt a little euphoric afterwards.

    This system works much better. But only if you give, too.

    All you have to do is go to the Red Cross office at 2751 Bull St. Or make an appointment by calling 1-800-GIVELIF. Tell them the Columbia Rotary sent you. Or don’t tell them anything. Just give.

  4. Nick Nielsen

    They won’t take mine. I gave as often as I could after I enlisted in the USAF in 1975 and was past the three-gallon mark when the Red Cross started worrying about variant Creuzfeld-Jacobs Disorder (the human equivalent of “mad cow”). Since I pretty much spent the 80s in Europe, I can’t give until they come up with a test for vCJD.

    I miss it.

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