It’s official now. The Little Rock Red Cross facility will
close its blood collection center, after over a hundred gallons from me.
A disclosure: almost all of mine consisted of donating
platelets through an apheresis machine. You got counted as making more than one
donation each time for that. Still …
Here’s how it happened. Being a good and loyal American, I
was proud when my wife, Brenda von Tungeln, RNP, and her friend, the late Kathy
LeClair, RN, set up the original “pherisis” program at the Little Rock center back
in the 1980s. Being great person, a truly great person, one of America’s greatest
persons, I immediately signed up to be a platelet donor.
Just a minute. I’m listening to Isaac Stern playing Mozart’s
Violin Concerto Number Five, and a particularly magnificent arpeggio made my
nose twitch like it was growing from the pure joy of the music.
Where was I? Oh. I volunteered to be a platelet donor one
evening about eight o’clock when my wife called me from the Red Cross Center
and said, “Put that wine down, get dressed, and get your [butt] down here, a burn
victim needs platelets and we can’t find a donor."
“Jim Dandy to the rescue.” I became a “go to” donor.
Around a hundred and twenty gallons later, they are shutting it
all down. Actually, about six months ago, I decided that I had reached the age
at which I might need the platelets more myself and had retired from donating.
It’s all part of the passing of an era.
How did the process work? Well, in the old days, it was
really something. After processing, they put you on a bed and stuck a needle in the vein of one arm (out) and a needle in the vein of the other arm (back in) and began circulating your
blood through a machine that spun the platelets out and collected them.
You counted the concrete blocks on the wall for about two
hours while the machine went “clackey-clack.” Then, they disconnected you,
stopped the bleeding, gave you a cookie and some orange juice, and sent you on
your way. Aged angels performed the last steps, and also gave you a sticker that
told others of your bravery and goodness. You were done until next time.
Oh, did I mention that there is no waiting period for
platelet donations? They would take you weekly if you would come, or were ordered
to.
As you might guess, it proved to be a tiresome process back
in the day. Then, an instance of divine intervention occurred. They put a
television in the donation room. Oh, blessed soap operas.
Later, they attached VHS machines and people donated tapes
of movies. Oh, blessed Flashdance.
You couldn’t find a movie that was worse than counting concrete blocks.
More changes occurred over the years. The machines got
faster, down to ninety minutes or so. They came up with one-arm machines. They
switched to DVDs and amassed a large library of films and old TV shows, along
with individual viewers so I never had to suffer through Terms of Endearment again. In fact, toward the end, I usually opted
for films of the old Alfred Hitchcock
Hour, just the thing to accompany the removal of “my precious bodily
fluids.”
It was sort of a mixed barrel of experiences. In the beginning
they treated the apheresis donors like royalty, even put on a banquet in our
honor once a year. We entered through a separate entrance, avoided the
gatekeeper, and donated in room reserved for us away from the regular blood donors.
Even if your wife didn’t run the operation, staff knew your name and your
entire family history. They might even help you attend the “call of nature” if
it meant not spoiling a donation. It was interesting.
Later, we became “numbers” and the process lost some of its
luster. Oh well. I’ll always have the memory of the time a Catholic nun was in
the donation bed next to me and we were watching a movie that some other donor
had left there. It was a fine movie and we watched the ending credits with satisfaction. The tape kept rolling and a new film started.
Oh my. Let’s just say it was not something that one would ever, under any circumstances, play for a nun, although she voiced no dissatisfaction whatsoever. Me? I was stunned into immobility.
What happened in the apheresis room stayed in the apheresis room.
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| A fellow donor. |
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