Donating Blood

I went down to the high school to donate on Monday. They had over 200 students signed up and no room for me. I will have to catch another opportunity. I was told the Methodist Church is having a donation drive at the end of the month around the 26th. There is also going to be one at Baker Prairie on May 4th to help Riley.

I am hopeful that perhaps Riley will get some young healthy football player's blood and really perk up. Mom tells me the Muslim community in Portland just did a blood drive. I told her if that's the case, Riley will probably want Indian (middle Eastern) food after this week. She laughed.


We talk about what happens to all that blood. It does age. I hate the thought of it just getting tossed. Mom mentions that it may get sent to rural areas, like eastern Oregon where they don't have as many donors. I say it gets sent to places like Haiti or Chile where there are many people at once in need and in crisis. There have been enough crisis for the Red cross recently that I figure none of it will go to waste. It truly is an inexpensive way to donate.

The question was raised over the difference in platelet donating to blood donating. It takes a little longer, two hours or so. They hook you up to a machine and give you two lines. One line siphons the blood out and the other puts it back into you. The machine filters out the platelets then gives you back your own blood. They look for people with high platelet counts to donate. You have to go to special locations. The normal blood drives don't have the machine with them. They test your whole blood to see if you are a candidate with high platelet counts.

Few people realize that it is a different process. The nurses at the hospital encouraged us to look into platelet donating as they sometimes run short. Since you get your blood back and platelets are replaced within a 10 day span, you can donate platelets every two weeks, much more often then red cell donating. Whole blood can be donated only every two months or longer, as it is stressful on your body.

In Riley, as the red cells, from the transfusions, die they leave iron behind in his system. This iron builds up to toxic levels in his liver over time. Its another reason why we want fewer red blood transfusions. You hear of iron overdoses from vitamins. Riley can overdose on iron from blood transfusions. Its one of the reasons he doesn't do vitamins anymore. He calls himself Iron man.

The cylcosporin does use up magnesium so Riley is now taking prescriptive magnesium twice a day.


I wish Obama would give credit for hours of volunteering. If you want to get the people out to volunteer make the hours a tax write off, say minimum wage value or half that. Just another thought as we approach tax time.