Yesterday a blood donation bus came by the office for the quarterly donation drive. I'd donated whole blood twice before; but this time, the bus had an apheresis machine for doing Double Red Blood Cell process.
Human has an average of 12 units of blood (a unit is 450ml). It is composed primarily of plasma (55%) and red blood cells (45%). A whole blood donation removes one unit of this mixture. A Double Red Blood Cell procedure removes one unit of only RBC, which is about the same amount of RBC removed in 1/4.5= 2.2 whole blood donation.
I had one needle stuck into a vein on the inside of elbow. Blood was first drawn into the machine. It then separated out the whole blood to plasma and RBC. The plasma and some saline were returned to the vein through the same needle. This cycle was repeated four times. The procedure took 40 minutes vs. 30 minutes for whole blood.
When the plasma was being returned, I could feel that it was cold. My fingertips and lips were prickling because of the cold. I was at that point where I would almost start shivering.
I felt weak throughout the day, weaker than after doing whole blood donation. When I got home, I slept almost immediately. I felt good about donating, though.
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