The donation did not go well. The needle never felt right in my arm (I've been donating for almost 35 years so I know what "not right" feels like). The machine that was supposed to filter out the platelets and put everything else back in my arm kept beeping during the "put it back" part. After 30 minutes of trying, the tech decided to call it quits.
Two days later, my "donation" arm looked like this:
The bruising got worse and it got painful. A week later my doc diagnosed phlebitis (inflammation and infection of blood vessels), put me on antibiotics, and told me to cancel my clients for the rest of the week.
The good news is that the antibiotics kicked in pretty quickly and less than a week later my arm is much better and the bruising is 75% gone. The other good news is that "clearing my schedule" for the rest of the week only meant cancelling 3 clients and I was able to get back to work by the weekend.
But what if it had been a blood clot and my doc had told me to clear my calendar for several weeks (or months)? I don't consider a blood donation "risky behavior" and, like so many MTs, I don't carry disability insurance, short-term or long-term. How quickly could I have been in deep doo-doo financially?
The answer is: pretty damned quickly.
My husband and I have enough savings to get by without my income for a month or two but it gets tight after that. And what if I didn't have a partner and/or savings? What the heck would I do? Re-tooling for a new not-dependent-on-my-limbs profession takes time and planning!
As MTs, we can be put out of work very very quickly and relatively easily and most of us are not prepared for that, financially. I got lucky this time. But I gotta get much more serious about disability insurance!
How did everything heal up? Came across your post on a google search. I have slight bruising, not nearly as bad as yours, two red bruise spots and some very light bruising up and down my arm. Going to go back to plasma center tomorrow to have them check on it, and then consult my doctor from there if I need to.
ReplyDeleteEverything healed up in about a week (after I started on the antibiotics) and I haven't had any problem since then. But I've refused to go back to the donor center every again, even though it's the largest and most convenient. I even had them put a note in my file to *never* ask me to donate there again.
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