First Convalescent Plasma Donation

I had my first convalescent plasma donation with the American Red Cross a few weeks ago. As I shared previously, I contracted COVID-19 earlier this year and I was confirmed to have the antibodies through a recent ARC appointment where I donated whole blood. Even though there is not enough hard data on this virus to determine what the timetable is for someone retaining antibodies or whether having those antibodies will keep someone from contracting COVID-19 again, I determined that if I had the chance to help someone stave off the virus and recover that it was worth doing so.

Within days of again being eligible to donate blood, I made an appointment to undergo the lengthy process of donating plasma and platelets. While whole blood donation takes less than half an hour, plasma donation can take well over 2 hours because the blood has to go through a machine to centrifuge out the plasma and platelets and return the remaining blood back to the body. Rather than sitting on a cushioned medical table, they have recliners and individual TVs with Netflix available to those donating plasma to offset donor's time and potential discomfort. The part I did not learn until I was sitting in the recliner was that they required needles in each arm for the feed and return lines which made movement or doing any other tasks like checking your phone very difficult.

Once the initial sting of the needles wore off and I had my Netflix movie playing, I settled in and felt relatively comfortable. However, once the movie ended I could not resist the temptation to check my phone and take some pictures. I did not realize it but my chair was set pretty far back and I had slumped down such that my arms, which had needles in them, were supporting a majority of my upper body and had become somewhat bent. With about 15 minutes remaining in my donation, the nurse saw me trying to use my phone and my slightly bent arms and tried to correct the position of my left arm. She had put gauze over the insertion point of the needle on both arms when she first stuck me so I could not see at that point what had happened. When she returned to inform me that the donation was done I asked her if she could first remove the needle in my left arm as I was experiencing quite a bit of discomfort. She quickly took a look and realized what was causing the discomfort - the needle in my left arm, the return line had "infiltrated", meaning that it was no longer returning blood into my vein but rather was building up under my skin! Fortunately, this occurred only for the last 15 minutes of the procedure but I still had a visible knot and was mildly traumatized by what had happened, apart from the growing discomfort. She worked to rapidly wrap up the procedure, get me an ice pack for my arm, and informed me that the only complication I would have would be a large bruise.

She was right - there was some residual discomfort but the bruise showed up the next day, grew over the course of the week, and started to turn from blue to shades of purple and yellow. Only late last week, over 3 weeks later did the bruise finally go away entirely. While I want to donate again, this incident did give me some pause and lessons learned - hopefully the nurse also is a little more careful next time. The thought that a couple hours of discomfort might save a life though is still worth it to me, so I will be back at some point this year.

#plasmadonation #covid19antibodies #americanredcross