Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Double Red

Also called "Power Red" by the American Red Cross.  It is a procedure in which they take twice as much blood from you per donation, but return fluid to your body after each batch via sending it back up the tube to your veins. It is more efficient for the donator, as the preparation is the same whether you donate one pint or two: travel to the donation spot, getting your blood and blood pressure checked, filling out the forms, waiting your turn.  The donation time is twice as long, but that is usually the short part anyway. I have long preferred it for this reason.

Well, never again.  Today it went all wrong and the return fluids didn't go into the veins but into the surrounding tissue, so my upper arm is swollen enough that I will have to eat with my left hand. I can do most other things, gingerly.  I kick myself, because I should have mentioned it immediately when it started to burn as soon as the fluid return started, which I knew from experience was not usual.  But I just figured "Well, some times hurt more than others in a lot of things. Natural variation."  Nope.

3 comments:

james said...

I'll bear that in mind. I would avoid such things on general principles--I try to minimize the number of things that go into my blood, and have a close eye on the procedures when they do. I've no idea what the guts of their machines look like.

charlie said...


I also had bad luck with double red, but it may have been me.

For a while I was doing platelets. Probably donated platelets fewer than 20 times total.

Platelets took a while--a needle in both arms, and they will show you a movie during the donation. The shelf life is very short for platelets, and they say there is a big need.

I appreciate what the Red Cross does. Eventually I became a research subject, which pays me and knocks me out of the donor pool for blood donations.

cheers!

Charles W Abbott

Sam L. said...

I donated 92 times,and the next time I went, the list of "Do not donate if taking these meds...", the very first one on the list, I was taking. Still am.