Saturday 14 May 2011

Friday 13th May 11

A bit of a frustrating day, blog-wise, as I was keen to send my Mass Observation post to the website recording the day, but Blogger was down all day, and had lost my post, and was just showing Wednesday's as the last one.  However, I got on with various other things.

One of the things was to get a sack of riddled compost for Kay, and to fill a sack of unriddled out of a compost bin of finished 'raw' compost for her, and load my trailer.

I got a reply from a freecycler saying yes to the microwave.  He'll collect tonight.

I had an early lunch  and at 1pm got going to Kay's in Holgate.  This delivery took a much shorter time than expected, and I arrived at the station to catch my bus at 1.45.... and my bus was 2.38.  But there was an earlier bus, which passed Seacroft Hospital so I caught that.

As I arrived in Leeds it started to rain heavily so on my  short walk to the blood donor centre, I got quite wet. They were happy to deal with me despite my being earlier than expected. I read the standard donor forms and signed the consent, then had another nurse explain about the platelet donation.  I was told that the normal range of platelets in blood was 150,000 to 400,000 per mm3, the average being 200,000 to 250,000.  My count was 370,000 which was why I'd been invited to donate.  Most people donate 2 units in a session lasting between an hour and 90 minutes, but they reckoned I'd be able to give 3 units. If they extract platelets from donated blood, they need 4 units of blood to make one unit of platelets.  They explained about the anticoagulant added to the blood, and the possible side effects.  I signed up to donate.

I was connected up to the machine and it started a cycle of extracting a volume of blood, passing it through a centrifuge to separate red blood cells from the plasma and platelets, and then returned the blood.  I was connected up for an hour, when the machine signalled I'd done... 3 units in 57 minutes.  The nurses were delighted.  They encouraged me to come back in a month.  Whilst having a cuppa afterwards, I got chatting to a chap called John who was an experienced platelet donor, and he lived in York so gave me a lift back to the Tadcaster Road between Tesco and the Cross Keys on St Helen's Road.  I walked into town, taking 20 minutes, and then cycled home, feeling good that I was a special platelet donor. Each time I donate, I'll get two points on my donor record, which so far is 26 units of blood plus today's two units of platelets.  Even though I gave three, I still only get two units on my donor card.

I got in sometime after 6pm and lit the stove, and Gill made me some tea.  The Freecycler collected the microwave.  I had a fairly relaxing evening.... blogger eventually came back and I was able to submit my Mass Observation post.  I didn't get to bed til after 2am.

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