I\u2019ve been giving blood for a while now and it\u2019s a pretty easy and painless thing to do. The blood bank used to be on the way to Taco Bell and the bank, so I\u2019d stop by every eight weeks on my lunch hour. The giving blood part only takes about 15 minutes but the questionnaire and waiting after giving means that about an hour total is used up. I switched to doing an R2 donation a few years ago because it meant that I only had to go every 16 weeks and the amount of time actually donating is only about 45 minutes, so I saved a half hour of time. A few months ago they were desperately short of platelets and asked if I could give. I didn\u2019t have anything else to do that day so I went home and got my laptop and donated. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a little bit uncomfortable, but mostly because you have to stay in one place for 2 1\/2 – 3 hours. When the blood leaves your body and goes to the machine, it feels just like when you are giving blood. In other words, no sensations at all. But when they put the red blood cells back in you get a weird sensation, almost like having a couple glasses of wine. Not unpleasant but weird. You can donate every two weeks, but that\u2019s a bit too often for me, so I go once a month unless they have a critical shortage.<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t given blood before or haven\u2019t done an R2, I\u2019d recommend starting slow and working up. If you have given blood before, go for it. The platelets are used in patients undergoing chemotherapy or who have had organ transplants.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Flat Stanley and me donating.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been giving blood for a while now and it\u2019s a pretty easy and painless thing to do. The blood bank used to be on the way to Taco Bell and the bank, so I\u2019d stop by every eight weeks on my lunch hour. The giving blood part only takes about 15 minutes but the … Continue reading Donating Platelets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}