Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyah
Due to my low blood pressure, I'm not a great candidate for blood donation (or so I've been told). I'm registered with One Match though. Just out of curiosity, how was the donating part for your wife & what was the recovery time like?
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Don't believe that, my wife has low BP as well it just takes her 15min instead of 5 like me.
The donation is quite serious. They give you numerous drugs to stimulate the production of bone marrow. It's typically a 2-3month process but due to the severity of his cancer wifey only had 1 month. So she was in quite a bit of discomfort (long bones ache like crazy). The day of the donation she was admitted as a patient to the hospital. She got hooked up to some separation machine and had a jugular stent put in. Her blood was then filtered out 8-10x to fill the stem cell amount, this took about 10hrs. After it was done her stem cells were flown to Vancouver and were given to the patient immediately. It takes about 3-4 weeks for the new stem cells to graft to the recipient. After that his white blood count starts to go up and hopefully it takes. She had to be under 48hr care with no driving, quick motion, etc. That stent is HUGE. After that I don't recall any other issues.
The stimulating drugs are serious. They can cause numerous health issues. But she said she would make the same decision every time.