Extremely Irritated

[jayfurr]

I am extremely irritated.

I have thalassemia trait. Different form of hemoglobin, smaller red cells, and I shouldn't have kids with anyone else who has thalassemia trait because the kids would have thalassemia major and would have short and unpleasant lives. My blood usually measures as lower in hemoglobin because of the trait.

That hasn't stopped me from donating my O- blood to the American Red Cross 34 times in the last ten years.

Some of you may be familiar with having a sample of your blood dropped in a little vial of blue solution. If the drop of blood promptly drops, you're eligible to give; if the drop hovers or stays put on the surface, you're not. Using that test, I always fail, so they have a more precise means of measuring using a centrifuge which measures the hematocrit (the percentage of red blood cells in the sample).

Two-thirds of the time I've gone in to donate I've had them spin a sample of my blood in the little hematocrit-measuring centrifuge and it's come back 38% or higher and I've been eligible to donate that day. I've been as low as 36%, but rarely. Usually if I fail it's because I'm at a 37%.

When I fail, it's no big deal. I'll go off, having lost a half hour of my time, and come back in a week and try again. Usually at that point I'm eligible. (And, no, taking iron supplements, which the Red Cross recommends as a matter of course to anemic donors, doesn't do much for me. My blood isn't going to stop being thalassemia trait blood just because of an increase in dietary iron.)

Well, enough rambling. Here's what I'm extremely irritated about:

The Red Cross has switched to having everyone's hematocrit measured via these little red machines that do some sort of spectroscopic analysis of your blood in a little slide. No more little vial of blue liquid, no more centrifuge. Instead of the answer coming back in the form of a percentage, it comes back as a number like "12.2" or "11.5" or whatever.

I went in to a blood drive at the mall on Saturday. I started to give my little speech about how they'll have to spin me and not even waste their time with the blue liquid test, and the nurse cut me off and said "we now use these" and pointed to the little red machine on her table. I said "Oh, okay."

She pricked my finger, let the blood flow into a little glass slide thingy, and stuck it in the machine. A few seconds later, she announced my number was 11.5 and it'd needed to be 14 or something. I blinked and said "11.5? What's that in percentage, like on the old centrifuge?" She took a while looking for the conversion chart and came back, eventually, with the answer: "32".

I went "WHAT???" because I've NEVER gotten a 32. I explained how I'm sometimes a little too low to give but NEVER have gotten a 32.

She had another nurse come in and repeat the test, just to be sure.

10.8.

"10.8?????" I didn't ask them to give me a comparitive figure for that, but I could guess. If 11.5 was a 32 and I needed a 14 or whatever to be eligible, 10.8 probably equated to a 30 or something.

So, not only was I not eligible to give, I was four or five LIGHT YEARS from being eligible to give. It's the same damn blood I've always had, but these nifty new machines are somehow taking a look at it and saying "Nope, that's pure crap."

Carole, upon hearing me fuming later, theorized that the spectroscopic analysis (or whatever the machine does) doesn't know how to properly analyze thalassemia trait blood and was giving an improperly low reading.

I have no idea what the actual story is, but as I see it, if that's what the machines are going to read, then I'm probably never going to be able to donate EVER AGAIN. It's one thing to know that 1 time out of 3 I'm going to be deferred. It's another thing entirely to be told that my blood is so absurdly low in iron that on my best day I'm not high enough.

And to top it all off, I got a call last night from a Blood Services employee asking if I could come in to donate. I told her what I've just told you, only more succinctly, and she expressed sympathy and said I wasn't the first person with this problem. She said she'd pass the word on to the director that people who'd been able to give suddenly weren't able to. I didn't have a lot of hope that anything would come of it... but at least I knew that I wasn't completely insane.

Today I called the Red Cross Blood Services headquarters in Massachusetts and was told that I was basically out of luck, that the machines are extensively Q.C.'d before being put into use and couldn't possibly be giving an improper reading. I tried to get the woman I spoke to to even consider that it was a bit odd that one method of testing my hematocrit had routinely given me numbers 20% higher than the new method, but she'd apparently had enough training in sounding sympathetic while actually saying nothing at all of substance that I wasn't able to pin her down and agree that something odd might be going on.

So, to make a long story short, I'm probably hosed for good as a blood donor. I'm going to take iron supplements every day this week and try again this coming Saturday to see if I can give. If they again tell me "Sorry, your blood has all the iron of tap water, so sorry" I guess I'll give up for good.

Sigh.

Comments

[batzel.livejournal.com]

If it's any comfort, I'm sure SOMEONE is out for your blood...

I stopped giving blood years ago. It was just too traumatic for my system. Made me feel a bit selfish, but the nurses who dealt with me were probably glad not to anymore.

Besides, it was too easy for you. If you really want to support giving blood, you'll have to come up with another way to support it -- like, by wearing a black-and-red cape and fake fangs and chasing people around or something.

Technology. *spit*

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

When you say 'traumatic', did you faint and stuff?

[batzel.livejournal.com]

No fainting, but almost. Took me a long time to feel capable of getting up and leaving. Too many bad experiences with needles as a kid.

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

When you collect scrap metal in a post-apocalyptic landscape, you're supposed to wear protective gloves and things, dude.

[mr-mediocre.livejournal.com]

Nothin' but sympathy from me, Jay. The Red Cross got a false positive from an HIV test on my last donation back in the early/mid 1990s, and I was henceforth banned by law from donating again.

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

I think that may have changed relatively recently, but I don't know for sure.

How did you get AIDS, living as you do in 1300 AD, well before the CIA engineered the virus?

Why this is

[(Anonymous)]

Jay, don't be too mad about this. What you experienced is a difference between the hemoglobin concentration in your blood and your hematocrit. In normal people with normal hemoglobin, their hematocrit is roughly three times their hemoglobin. Since you have thalassemia trait, your red cells contain less hemoglobin than normal red cells, but you have normal red cell numbers. So, when you measure hemoglobin concentration in milligrams/deciliter, you have less. But, hematocrit is percentage of red cell volume in the raw blood. Yours is normal, or on the slightly low side of normal. If you really want to get this up to donate blood, just hemoconcentrate yourself with a diuretic, or exercise, to reduce the plasma volume of your blood and concentrate your red cells (factitiously). When you're done donating, you just rehydrate, and Bob's your uncle. Keep in mind that for every kilo (liter) of water you lose, only 1/3 of that is from blood plasma. So, if you want to gain 5% of your hematocrit, you've got to lose 3*5% of your blood volume, or roughly 5 liters *3 *5% = .75 liter of water, or ~6.6 pounds to sweat/diurese off in less than 24 hours, otherwise fluid shifts.

Re: Why this is

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

I understand all that now. I just felt peeved because they'd happily taken my blood for many years and apparently had no trouble using it. A change that robs them of a willing and dedicated donor without a huge demonstrable benefit seemed pretty pointless to me. Sigh. Next you'll tell me that my blood never was much use, O- or not.