That’s a lot of blood

Since being diagnosed in November, we have been keeping a tally of the number of people who have been inspired to donate blood. This week we hit 100 blood donations (approx 47 litres of blood), puts my 7 transfusions to shame, word of mouth is a powerful thing!

When we started this process I thought the number of blood transfusions I would receive throughout my treatment may be close to the number of donations friends/family were tallying up, how wrong I was. Within the first week I had recieved 2 matched blood transfusions and the donation team were already on 12! It is so great to see and hear about so many getting involved in giving blood and researching the potential for being a platelet donor.

Many of these guys had never donated before, and a few of my good friends who were petrified of needles and/or prone to fainting, still went to donate – great work team. I had many first timers getting in contact with me, unsure of why they hadn’t donated before, and stated how straight forward the process was, how lovely and patient the staff were, and how genuinely excited they were to find out their blood type. What was also great to hear was how many had then booked on to their next appointment. I have always been proud to be a regular blood donor, knowing that one bag of my blood could help/save up to three people, and I am now so proud of how many more people have been inspired to donate, and can sub in for me from now on ;-).

If you are new to giving blood, the Give Blood website is extremely informative and provides answers to all the questions you may have. It provides inspiring stories of grateful patients who received blood transfusions, information on the process of giving blood, dates and closest venues of upcoming donation sessions, statistics of how many of the UK population are giving blood (around 3% of the population, and yet I would guess that most people would just expect there to be blood for them should they ever need it!), what the current stock levels are and more. I checked the stock levels for my blood type (B RH pos) today, there are currently around 3000 in stock, which equates to 6.5 days of stock remaining.

Here are a few blood related facts that I hope will inspire you to continue donating, and inspire others to donate for the first time:

• AB neg is the rarest blood type with only 1% of the population being this type, whereas O pos is the most common (38% of the population).
• Why is the O neg blood group classed as universal? The O neg blood group do not have A or B antigens on the surface of their RBCs, and their blood serum contains anti-A and anti-B antibodies against the A and B blood group antigens. Therefore, an individual that is O neg can receive blood only from another O neg individual, but can donate blood to individuals of any ABO blood group (i.e., A, B, O or AB). Side note, O pos can be given to the ABO pos blood groups, but not ABO neg blood groups.
• A full donation is 470 ml and will usually take between 5 and 10 minutes (followed by all the biscuits you can eat).
• It can take up to 72 hours to replenish the blood volume lost during a donation, and 12 weeks for males to completely replenish their RBCs, and 16 weeks for females.
• Shelf life of the components of blood: Red cells – up to 35 days, Plasma – up to one year, Platelets – up to seven days.
• After Surgery  (30%) and Anaemia (30%), Haematology services (18%) are the next top users of the blood stocks.

I am looking forward to seeing how many donations we get to. Keep on giving!

I also wanted to plug the importance of registering on the bone marrow/stem cell register, if you are eligible. I found out before Christmas that I will probably need a stem cell transplant in my next stage of treatment, I won’t go into the full details of this treatment now, but it involves further intense Chemotherapy and Full Body Irradiation (FBI), and usually a 6-8 week stint in hospital, as you can imagine I wasn’t overjoyed by this news. Anyway, I had been reading up on stem cell transplants and I was surprised to read the following statistic; “every 20 minutes someone from the UK is told they have Leukaemia, with a stem cell transplant often their only chance of being cured”. Leukaemia patients need stem cells from a healthy person, with the same tissue type, to replace and repair their own damaged cells.

How do they identify matches? Here is a little bit of biology for you; matching is done based on your Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) tissue type. Your HLA is what makes you ‘you’, it is your individual genetic characteristic. You inherit a set of HLA from each of your parents. It is similar to your blood group, but much more diverse and complicated. Your HLA is made up of genes and within these they look at five key sites, or loci. Each one of these sites has two alleles (types of genes) making 10 in total. When it comes to matching, if 9 of these genes match up it’s a 9/10 match. If all 10 match then you’ve got a 10/10 match. When it comes to finding a match, the higher the better. It’s so important to find the best possible match because your body needs to accept the donor’s stem cells, this is called engraftment. About 30% of people in need can find a suitable donor in their family, with there being a 1 in 4 chance that your siblings will be a match (we are currently waiting to hear if Harriet is a match for me). But the other 70% rely on a stranger to save their lives. In 1974, the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Register was established, this register helps thousands each year in need of a match. They have over 500,000 adults on the register and are constantly working to increase that number.

If Harriet is not a match I will be relying on matching with one the volunteers on the register. If you are interested in finding out more on how to become a stem cell/bone marrow donor, I would suggest thoroughly researching the Anthony Nolan site, or asking for more information the next time you give blood.

This ended up being a longer post than I expected, but guess the researcher in me enjoys a bit of investigation into different topic areas. I thought I’d end this post with a quick summary (bullet points) of the last 13 days back in hospital as I don’t have much to report:

• The food is still dreadful, but I have learnt a few tricks to combat it this time round, firstly bring in your own sauces including a jar of Branston pickle (which can help with many of the bland sandwiches on offer), secondly, a can of tuna and a pitta are welcome break from the repetitive lunch so I always try to have these in my ‘food pantry’, thirdly, if you don’t ask you don’t get – I have managed to order from ‘secret’ menus including the gluten free menu (whereby you can order a jacket potato with cheese and beans) and I even managed to order CHIPS tonight, just 7 weeks late on these two options! Top secret information apparently. If all else fails, there is always HEINZ soup on offer.
• This time around I have Chemotherapy more frequently; I have one of the IV Chemo drugs 4 days in a row and then 3 days off for the 4 week period. I have 4 lots of intrathecal Chemotherapy (lumbar punctures), and another IV Chemotherapy drug twice during the next 28 days. I also take one Chemo drug orally everyday.
• I am in a different room, not quite the same view as my first room (which was probably the best view of Portsmouth in the entire hospital), however my new room is set off from the ward via separating doors and so it is very quiet, which is a little spooky in the day, but a luxury at night.
• I was allowed out last Friday on day release, as my neutrophils were over 2.0, this was a lovely surprise, and resulted in me enjoying a very filling Wagamamas followed by some of the infamous cake from the Tenth Hole, and a quick visit to work.

“Don’t know where I am going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring” – an apt quote I can relate to right now, RIP Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, Goblin King.