witness me, bloodbag!

The hotel was lovely and super-close to the donation site - that's a keeper for anyone else they need to send that way.

The donation site was... more of a mixed bag.

I got there before any of the staff when I rolled up at 0815, because both the phlebotomists thought the donation was at 0900; the on-site coordinator arrived about 0820.

Things remained a little rocky with the facility staff once they arrived and got down to business.

Them: "We're ready."
Me: *picks up tote bag with snacks, Tums, laptop, and cell phone*
Them: "What do you think you're going to be able to do?"
Me: "... keep myself occupied?"
Them: "Oh, no, honey, you ain't going to be able to do nothin'."
Needles: *go in both elbows, rather than an elbow/back-of-forearm, to allow one hand any kind of freedom of movement*
Me: "Well, at least my girlfriend had the foresight to load movies* on her computer."

The apheresis equipment looks to be a half-step up from what they had at Shands, or maybe they just used a bigger-gauge needle, because it needed a lot less intra-donation hand-holding to make the centrifuge happy - or maybe the process is better able to extract the T cells from what they drew off and it doesn't need to be micromanaged as much anymore. In either case, the attending nurses paid a lot less attention to what was being drawn off than during either of my previous two donations. There were no other donation/recipient folks present until noon, and, while I try to be as low-maintenance as possible as a patient/guest, it was a notably less-welcoming environment than the previous ones had made me accustomed.

They also seemed to be a lot less actively involved with the process as a whole, especially towards the end, when all the saline replacement and calcium depletion had me feeling rather desperate to use the restroom, and they took an almost ostentatiously long time unhooking one, and then the second, needle. When my answers to "how are you feeling?" are increasingly pointed iterations of "I really need to use the bathroom," maybe... pick up the pace just a scosh? Nobody likes a bedpan, folks. I had a sense of urgency there that was, perversely, in inverse proportion to what it looked like the staffer was feeling - the more uncomfortable I got, the more slowly she appeared to go about her tasks.

Despite being hooked up to a calcium/saline** IV on the return line, I still got to "enjoy" the symptoms of calcium depletion at varying levels of acuteness throughout.

The blood return warmer on the rig I was wired into had two temperature settings: OFF and FRESH COFFEE. I opted for OFF. Which was funny, because everyone else was in long pants, scrubs, and fleece jackets, and i was in a T-shirt and shorts.

The staffers mentioned that they (OneBlood) have a facility in Orlando; if my donor recipient needs another refill, maybe that's an option. The combo platter of a pair of four-plus hour drives compounded by a lot less favorable bedside manner than the folks at Shands had me feeling pretty crispy, even though the donation itself went more quickly this time than either of the previous iterations (18,000 ml to be drawn and spun, rather than 23,000 or whatever it was the previous ones)

... and I totally forgot to pick up a well-wishes greeting card for the recipient.

* Captain America: The First Avenger (and CA: The Winter Soldier, but we only watched the first one at the facility; TWS was once we got home)
** I had to laugh that, the last time they checked my blood pressure before unhooking, it was elevated 30 extra points, and their concern was that I was *dehydrated* rather than, you know, tense from trying not to piss my fucking pants and at a five or six in terms of discomfort due to calcium depletion. I pointed out that the more saline they wanted to push, the more I had to pee, which had approximately no effect on their attitude whatsoever. I weighed EIGHT POUNDS more when I got home yesterday than I did when I left the house Monday morning - snacking on some homemade beef jerky and drinking two 16oz bottles of water ain't gonna do that, folks. How about you just turn off the fucking spigot and let me take a much-needed leak.