I posted some blogs from my mobile yesterday but they seem to have gone missing in action.
I went to the Red Cross yesterday to donate some blood plasma. I sat down at about 1:30pm and the machine drew out blood twice and took the plasma, mixed it with anticoagulant and pumped the blood with red blood cells back into me. The third time, when it was almost complete, I felt faint and told a nurse “I think I’m going to faint” then passed out. I woke up with my feet in the air as they tried to drain blood and oxygen back into my brain.
After a while they sat me up a little bit then did that a few more times over about 45 mins. Once I was sitting upright they decided to give me a cabcharge and send me off home. Well, after about 10 mins I passed out again so they got the ambulance in not long before 5pm.
I had a trip in the ambulance to the local private hospital and spent the afternoon there getting saline dripped into me and monitored my pulse and blood pressure. The last number I saw before leaving was 115/67 and I said “It seems to have come up a bit since I was admitted”. The doctor said “Yes, you are up about 20 points from when you came in”. I’m guessing I was lower at the Red Cross, though. Mum says this is a lot and got a bit of a shock when she heard. She says it sounds like anaphylactic shock.. probably from the anticoagulant pumped back into me. The nurses did say there was a slight chance of an allergic reaction, but said I didn’t have to go and prove them right 
I said “Some guys will do anything just to get an afternoon off work, but this is a bit extreme!”.
Just before 6pm I went to the loo since I’d had so much fluid put into me and walked there and back fine without passing out, so they said I could discharge myself. I had a cup of tea and some sandwiches and checked out. I got a taxi back to Bec’s mum and dad’s place and spent the night there so someone would be able to keep an eye on me. I had more water.. about 750ml of cold fridge water and some sandwiches and went to bed at 9pm. I was feeling so exhausted.
I got up this morning and Bec’s mum dropped me off at the train station so I caught a train home, got changed and showered and came back into work again. I had my multivitamins and a glass of V8 vegetable and fruit juice drink I’ve started getting into. Before I got a train I picked up a ham and cheese croissant and a mocha coffee from a local coffee shop to have for some breakfast. Boy did I need it!
I don’t think I’ll be going back to the Red Cross again. I had no problems donating just blood a couple of months ago, but once bitten twice shy so they say.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:15 am - Edit
So did they give you a shot of adrenalin? Cass says she had one once & it’s now her drug of choice. Fanfarkintastic…:-D.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:35 am - Edit
Nup. Got saline solution and that’s it.
Ript off!
Also when I went in for my hernia op about 14 years ago or something they told me the drugs would make me really high. Didn’t experience that either
September 14th, 2006 at 11:36 am - Edit
As someone who has needed donated blood to keep them alive, I say thank you for taking the time to donate blood.
I am sorry that your experience had to be a bad one, but I do hope that does not put you off from donating normal blood as its people like me, who without donations like yours, would not be around to enjoy life.
I do encourage others to donate blood because without blood donations, lots of people do die.
Thank you
September 15th, 2006 at 1:32 am - Edit
Glad to hear you’re feeling better! Of course I always have to read about these things 15 hours after they happen, so you could have died and I wouldn’t have known about it for two days, so really I am glad that you’re okay. I hope you don’t stop giving blood, just the plasma donations.
Here in the States we get paid to give plasma, but there’s not enough money for me to take that chance, so you don’t either. Ugh.. I’m starting to sound like my mother. Take care.
September 15th, 2006 at 8:38 am - Edit
We don’t get paid diddly squat for any of the donations. Just the warm fuzzy feeling we did something to help people.
What’s worse is I sent email blogs about what was going on at the time so there’d be something in the blog, but the blog didn’t post it and just deleted my posts so you would not have known anything had been going on unless one of my friends posted a comment on the blog to say I was gone.
Stupid software. I’m tempted to port it all over to Moveable Type or something else. WP is really shitting me.
When you enter blogs via the website, you click on the WRITE POST link and it locks up internet explorer (all instances) until ie works out how to render the images and javascript on the page. This can take up to a minute or it may just completely lock up the computer and I have to kill IE to get things going again.
Yes, you could say it’s just IE’s fault and why don’t I use Firefox. Firstly, I quite like Maxthon’s IE extensions. Secondly, if an application knows IE renders it slowly or locks up they should program around this. No sense in just blaming the browser for it. Especially when that browser still holds the highest market share in the world.
September 15th, 2006 at 2:22 pm - Edit
I’d like to give blood especially to give back after all the blood tranfusions Zacky was given but considering how much trouble they have getting blood from me for a blood test will be a bit hard. I should send Chris to do it he has nice juicy veins