Live in others!!!

We have heard of "Live and let others live". I would like to modify this a bit as "Live in others and let them live". Yes, when we have a chance to live in others by donating blood when we are alive and other organs like eye, kidney etc after our death, the modified statement makes sense right?

I thought of sharing my experience I had last weekend as it was a very satisfying one for me as I was chosen by The Almighty to help a person in need . To be specific, the person, suffering from blood cancer, was in need of blood platelets.

I know many of you who read this would have donated blood atleast once or would be thinking of doing it in the future. I am not sure how many of you have heard of donating blood platelets, a component in our blood.

Last weekend, I got a call from some group, which assist in arranging blood for the people in need, to check if I am interested to donate platelets. They have traced me through the site www.indianblooddonors.com where I have registered very recently. I checked with our family doctor if it is safe to donate blood platelets and confirmed them I can donate.

Platelet separation process
This particular platelet donation takes 1 to 2 hrs of time based on the platelet count of the donor. Normally the range is 3 to 4.5 lakh platelets per cubic liter of blood (the person I donated had a count 8000 only). They have an instrument to separate the platelet from our blood. This is how the process goes.

Before the process starts, they check if the donor has good platelet count. Once it is fine, they ask us to get refreshed and come as we will have to lie down for a max of 2 hours without any disturbance. Once we are ready, they inject in our hand and pull blood to a container in that instrument. And when the blood is pulled out of our body, you will feel numb around your lips as the Calcium content gets dropped. The lab technician gives you a tablet to chew so to compensate that.

Once 400 ml of blood is collected, the platelet separation process starts. Don’t get panic on what will happen to the 400 ml of our blood. The blood is collected by the instrument into a container with a solution that keeps the blood safe from clotting. Once the platelet separation process is over, the blood with out the platelet will be injected back into our body.

This process of pulling out and injecting blood into our body happens 4 to 5 times. In this process platelet collected was around 210 ml and the platelet count will be around 2 lakh it seems. And they call the platelet donation "online" because the life span of the collected platelet is 2 days it seems. So ideally, once the platelet is collected from a donor, it should be immediately injected to the patient. Since it is the component alone that is injected, it is good than the whole blood being injected. Also, you can donate blood in the next 2 days :) Cool right!!!!

The patient's people called us the next morning to say that now the count has increased from 8000 to around 90000 and that he was a bit stable. What more one can ask than things like this in your life? My wife & I were very much satisfied.

I would like you all to visit the website "www.indianblooddonors.com" and have yourself registered as you can not only look for the needy people, you can also look for the people who donate. Also, the details may not be the exact one. Check with your doctor for more details or google to know more.

And get a chance to live in others to make them live!!!!

This content is published here: http://healthmad.com/medicine/live-in-others/