Donation Date: February 6, 2012
My Appointment: 12:30pm
Others? No.
Here’s the recap:
My nurse was Lugi. She was the nurse sitting at the table during my Jan donation. She remembered I have a little girl and asked about her. Diane #2 was there. As was Wendy, who I vaguely remember. Was she from the Jan donation or from years ago? I found out form Lugi that Diane #1′s surgery went well and she is back to work. Good.
PAINful needle insert. But not on initial breaking through the skin, it was after the needle was already through. Also oddly, the pain only continued on fluid returns and not on blood draw. The pain was tight and/or pinching, depending on what was going on, and a lot on the backside of my arm not quite half way between my elbow and wrist. Did she hit a nerve? She pulled the needle out just a little (twice) and things were Much better, I only felt the pain maybe three times more over the donation and it was mild/ignorable. (Tuesday update: no bruise. )
My stomach felt iffy odd twice, but each time I ate a few Tums and it got better quickly. Very little needle vibration this time, I only caused the machine to bing twice and that was early on. And I didn’t set off the machine (cause it to pause) at all!
I had to pee really bad by the end, but I made it to a double platelet (6.4) despite the machine deciding to do a rinse cycle at 6.1! Such bad timing. The machine wanted 7.8, ah well.
Learned something new: the amount of water you drink the day before the donation, not how much you drink the day of, is what determines how open your veins will be!
It took 3.5 hours from leaving work to be back at work, and that was with me cutting the donation 20 minutes short!
After the donation I was little shaky in legs and stomach, but that was the machine vibration effect. It wore off within several minutes. I left center feeling really good. Back at work, I ended up “crashing” during a meeting. UGH, that was hard to deal with. Went and laid down after the meeting, I felt so heavy. Felt lots better afterwards, but still not normal.
So I’ve earned my Feb. pin. Glad I did the 12:30pm appointment to give me as much time as possible before picking up Amber. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do double platelets again under current normal circumstances. Too much time away from work, too hard a recovery for trying to work and/or having Amber.