Booted... Again

One of the things I do is apheresis. Once every ten days to two weeks, I go in to the Red Cross and bleed in a bag. For an hour or more, I sit in a comfy recliner, watching a movie DVD on a private TV, with a needle in each arm. Blood is drawn from the right arm, sent through a centrifuge that removes the platelets and plasma, then the red cells are returned to my left arm in a saline solution.

Yeah, it hurts a little, but not much. Actually, the blood pressure cuff around my right arm throughout the procedure bothers me substantially more than the needles do.

Why do I do it?

I'm a firm believer in giving back, but I'm kinda lazy. Apheresis provides vitally needed platelets and plasma and it's something I am well able to do. Plus it makes me feel virtuous.

Not quite two years ago, I went to Mexico with the Engineer for a conference. The week after I got home, I went in for my usual apheresis appointment. There's a question they asked every time, "Have you traveled outside of the United States within the last three years?" My "Yes" answer got me booted for a year. Seems the area I was in was rampant with malaria mosquitos, so I had to take a year off from donating to see if I had picked up any noxious diseases.

Geeze o' pete, that was a long year without any needles in my veins. Sometimes I fantasized that the platelets would build up inside of me until my whole circulatory systems clotted, but I made it through.

I decided that when my banishment was over I was going to try for 24 donations the next year. That's the max platelet donors are allowed. So I girded my loins, took my slow release iron tablets and bared my arms. As of September, I was on track to accomplish my goal.

Then I had a bad stick. Nobody's fault, the vein in my left arm has gotten cranky about being stuck so often. The needle must have nicked the far side of the vein, because when the platelets and saline started flowing back into me, it hurt like the dickens and I got a big knot above the needle where stuff was going into the muscle instead of the vein. They tried reseating the needle, but that didn't work. They tried a different vein and just succeeded in digging a few holes in my arm before giving up.

Went home, gave my arm a week to recover, then went back and had a successful donation.

Yesterday, I got the call.

"Hi Wunx~, I'm trying to find out why the computer canceled your next appointment."

Turned out the Red Cross has a new rule. If they can't return all of your red cells, you have to wait 56 days to donate again - just like a regular blood donor. I won't be eligible to bleed in a bag again until November 26th.

Booted again!

I'm not going to make my goal of 24 donations this year, but... there's always next year.

Of course, gentle reader, if you'd like to head on in to your local Red Cross chapter and help take up my slack, I'm sure that it would be greatly appreciated. They'll even give you juice and cookies afterwards.

Like the Red Cross says, "Give Life!"
https://www.givelife.org/

Manikins

For almost 15 years I've been a volunteer Red Cross instructor. I have taught First Aid, CPR for adults, children and infants at the citizen responder (regular folks) level, AED, CPR for the Professional Rescuer and Infectious Disease Transmission. Every few years the Red Cross changes the curriculum. Every few years the manikins change too.

I've worked with seven different manikins over the years, five in the past, two now:

• Resusci Annie, a life-size, full-body, heavy-weight female manikin who is normally reserved for professional level classes. The Cadillac of manikins, some models can be plugged into a computer -- she's expensive.
• Crash Kelly, now passe, thank goodness. He was a major pain in the derriere to put together, but a workhorse once he was assembled. Like most adult manikins, he was just head and torso, no arms or legs.
• Chris Clean, my personal favorite, a head and torso manikin that was medium-weight but easy to assemble -- his rubber face (nose, mouth, chin and cheeks) popped on and off for easy cleaning.
• The babies and Actar -- more about them below.

The old baby manikin was a fairly realistic, life size doll in an ugly pair of striped shorts. His legs bowed out like a cowboy or a frog on the dissection table. The whole front of his head was a latex mask that buttoned on behind his ears. When his face was off he looked like something you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. When his face was on he looked enough like a real baby that he creeped out some students. Because of this, I named him "Mutant Vampire Frog Baby."

I call the current baby manikins "Mutant Alien Vampire Frog Babies." They don't have the secret vampire face under a latex mask, but they still have frog's legs. They are hollow silver plastic with pop off heads and bitty plastic lungs that get buttoned to their chests under a blue foam tabard that snaps on at the crotch. They get toted around in a special zipper bag with "Actar Infantry" printed on it. Students find them much less distressing to work with than the old realistic baby manikins. You have to be very careful how you handle the new babies, though, or their heads fall off.

Now-a-days the primary manikins are cheaper and lighter. As well serving as an adult, they stand in for Little Timmy, which I guess is okay since, with no legs, they're short enough. Actar comes in four pieces, a hollow white plastic head, a corrugated black plastic cylinder that functions as a rib cage, a plastic bag lung and a blue foam sheet with three holes in it that the head and two ends of the rib cage cylinder get plugged into. When we get to the part of the class that requires the manikins, I have each student pick up the four pieces of Actar then guide them in putting him together.

I kinda miss Chris Clean, he was my main man for a few years. In fact, I bought my Mazda 626 based partially on being able to fit six Chris cases, a TV, a VCR and a box of supplies in it (amazing how much you can stuff into a hatch back) because I drove all over the western end of North Carolina certifying adult Girl Scouts.

I could never get that serious about Actar; he works, but he ain't no Chris Clean.