Now that I’ve written about the big news about our roommate, I can write about the little things. 🙂 I’m glad that people were supportive of our decision to help out Kay, by the way. I was worried, for some reason.
Anyway, in other news, my temporary crown is doing just fine. I’m hoping that the permanent one is in when I go in on Friday to get my filling replaced so I can be all done with dental work for a while. But I won’t know until I get there.
Also, yesterday I went in and donated platelets again. I got a call asking me to come back in since they were desperately low. I asked about whether or not I should just donate whole blood, because of the whole O negative thing, and she said that usually, yes, they’d rather I donated whole blood, but right now, they need platelets.
So I signed up for an appointment and went in yesterday. When the lady taking down my information saw that I’m O neg, she went out to talk with her supervisor about whether or not I should do platelets or whole blood, but it turns out that my platelet count is enviably high. She didn’t actually tell me what it was, but it’s apparently lovely. So, I sat and did that again.
I brought in Undercover Blues and it took just a little bit longer than that movie, since because my count is so high, I didn’t have to be hooked up for the whole 120 minutes. It actually did end up being pretty close to that, since my vein pressure for the machine kept getting so low and she’d have to hit the button again, but it wasn’t that bad. If I’d had to be plugged in for the whole two hours and it kept stopping like that, it would have taken much longer, since the timer on the machine pauses when it errors.
They let Justin sit in the back this time, at a little table in the same room as the blood drawing, but not back where I was at. It was nicer for both of us that they let him be back there. He wants to be there in case I don’t handle the draw well, and last time he had to sit way out in the lobby. I handled it better this time, too. I didn’t get the lips tingling much and I didn’t feel nearly so wiped out afterward. We did make sure I got some snacks and fluids back into me, but it wasn’t as necessary as last time.
The recommendation that they gave me was the next time I wanted to donate, I should come in and donate platelets again and then also do red cells at the end. They just program the machine to do both things, one after the other. It’ll do the platelets for the amount of time it’s supposed to do, and then it’ll pull red cells. It’ll kick me to the 8 weeks cycle instead of the 7 days cycle, but I think it’ll be a good use of my donations. And because it’s a smaller needle for the platelets donation, I expect that I won’t get so dizzy as I do at bloodmobile donations. Also, just not sitting in that rocking bus would be great.
So I’m probably going to set that up in the next couple weeks. I don’t think I’ll have time this coming weekend, but maybe the one after that will work.