How to Save a Life... a Platelet at a time

You don’t have to be a superhero or doctor to know how to save a life. You’ve been blessed with a good healthy body, and if you have taken care of what you have been given then you have an opportunity of giving back for what you have been blessed with. The relationship that I shared with Cancer was one of the reason I decided to donate platelets, when the doctors from TATA Memorial visited the office jumped at the opportunity to make a difference.

But nothing could prepare you as you step in the hospital. The air is heavy with despair, pain, sorrow, a sense of resignation, but despite this bleakness there’s a sense of hope, faith, a yearning for a miracle, praying for a miracle. You’re moved by the sight and the plight of patients, their families, their support systems, realising that couple of years ago, this would have been you, this would have been your plight. So you’re fighting back the tears, that lump in your throat that you try to force down, so that it doesn’t materialise and bring you to tears.

So you make it down the hallways, pass patients awaiting their turn, with the IV line le in their hand, their faces blank, numbed from the pain, numbed from the despair. So make it pass them trying not stare, trying hard not to cry. You rush to the lift and take to the floor where the blood bank lies.

You patiently await your turn as the doctors and technicians prepare the unit for you. Through your nervousness you try to make conversation with the cheerful girl who has handed you the form. You wince as the needle pierces your skin and goes through your vein as the tubes begin to fill with your blood which keeps going back and forth, trying to extract the platelets from it. You try to recollect the instructions that the doctor gave, when the cuff tightens, you begin to squeeze ball so that it increases the pumping of the blood, and stop when it begins to loosens. And there was something about the lights and the flow of blood.

You fight back sleep, and the urge to chat, because with move you feel the needle move in your vein, causing you wince with discomfort. But you know it’s a noble cause, so you suck it all in, your discomfort is nothing compared to that what the patient goes through, and your small act goes a long in saving lives.

So after an hour, once the procedure is complete, and your platelets have been extracted from your blood, you try to fight off the dizziness you feel, you try learn more about platelets donation from the doctors, who willing oblige and respond to your pesky questions. You realise that though this is your first, your fellow donors have have done this a number of time before, and doing it on regular basis, after the prescribed period, encouraging you to do the same.

So you leave the blood bank with your head held high, albeit a bit dizzy, with a feeling of optimism, a feeling of hope, knowing that your small act will go a long way in saving lives.

Some important facts:

1. One donation saves at least two lives.
2. Platelets are made in the bone marrow. There are no man made or synthetic substitutes for platelets.
3. One drop of blood consists of 250 thousand platelets.
4. Platelets are manufactured at the rate of 200 millions a day.
5. Leukaemia patients require more 20 platelets transfusion