T + 59 Pay Back Time
Yes after giving over a dozen tubes of blood on Wednesday, Thursday was my turn to get some back when I had my thirteenth through fifteenth units of blood since May this year. When you add them all up like that it's a bit scary really. Huge thanks to all you blood donors out there, as they say at the awards ceremonies, I couldn't have done it without you.
It was a fairly routine session really. The only "entertaining" part is fitting the cannula as I no longer have access via a hickman line. One of the chemo drugs I had earlier in the year, Methotrexate, is notorious for ruining your veins as far a getting blood into or out of them is concerned. I used to have quite good veins but now when you look at my arms you can hardly see any. However the nurse managed to fit the cannula on the first attempt though she admitted she couldn't see the vein she was aiming for or really feel it either so it was a bit of a speculative shot.
After that it was just a question of sitting and waiting for the blood to go through. Having arrived at 09:15 and getting hooked up at 09:50 I was back home by 16:00 already feeling the benefit of the extra oxygen carrying capacity of my blood.
It was a fairly routine session really. The only "entertaining" part is fitting the cannula as I no longer have access via a hickman line. One of the chemo drugs I had earlier in the year, Methotrexate, is notorious for ruining your veins as far a getting blood into or out of them is concerned. I used to have quite good veins but now when you look at my arms you can hardly see any. However the nurse managed to fit the cannula on the first attempt though she admitted she couldn't see the vein she was aiming for or really feel it either so it was a bit of a speculative shot.
After that it was just a question of sitting and waiting for the blood to go through. Having arrived at 09:15 and getting hooked up at 09:50 I was back home by 16:00 already feeling the benefit of the extra oxygen carrying capacity of my blood.
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