Their website says the power red donation only takes a little longer than a whole blood donation. (It also says that donating platelets takes hours.) So … I’m guessing the total time you spend at the red cross for power red isn’t three times what you spend for whole blood. But i am not an expert.
I also know the needle in arm time for whole blood varies. When my husband and i used to give whole blood, it took him maybe a third the time it took me. (He now gives platelets, and I’ve stopped giving, after getting a weird reaction for a couple of days after.)
So, blizzard Saturday and saw many same day whole blood appointments today (Sunday) for Red Cross donation center in Dedham, MA. Assumed they had a bunch of cancellations due to storm.
Booked one for my wife, one for me, headed down there. When we arrived, guy at front desk tells us they are not able to handle any same day appointments made on line because they only had three staff make it in, sorry, something about trying to get a hold of a supervisor (I assume so they could wake up the web lackey or something). So a waste of a trip for two of us and increased good will toward the operational wizards of the Red Cross.
I used to be a regular donor. About 20 years ago, I got a nasty letter telling me tha they had thrown my blood away because I had Hep C and to not come back. Of course I got upset and took the letter to my doctor who did a bunch of blood work and couldn’t find a trace of Hep C currently or in the past. I went back to the blood bank with her report, they took my blood and sent me another nasty letter.
About 5 years ago, a bloodmobile started showing up at work (A different for-profit company than the Red Cross) and I thought I’d try again. They sent me a not so nasty letter which I took to my doctor, etc.etc. Despite me asking to see the blood work from both for-profit* companies, neither of them were able to provide it. The end result is I’m not going to even bother trying again.
*Blood and blood products are high dollar items, just ask anyone who needs them.
I asked my sister about the staff who used to do blood drives. She was vague, and i think she didn’t know what happened to them. Maybe the red cross hasn’t used them for long enough that they’ve found other jobs.
Part of the difficulty in obtaining a whole blood donation appointment may be that for the purposes of the Red Cross whole blood is the least desirable product. Whole blood is almost never used for transfusions these days, most of the whole blood collected is further processed into components and used for specific purposes.
I’m a platelet donor lately, having switched over from power reds. They usually get a double unit of platelets out of me, around 70% of the time, occasionally I’m good for a triple unit. If they use whole blood donors to derive platelets it takes 6 units of whole blood for a single unit of platelets, so a double unit produces enough to replace the platelets from 12 whole blood donations, and single donor platelets are considered better for recipients. For a double unit I’m usually on the machine around 100 minutes, and a triple unit is just short of two hours. The last time I did a triple it was two episodes of The Witcher.
Once a month during a platelet donation they’ll grab a unit of plasma. That’s parallel processing so it doesn’t add any additional time in the chair.
Thanks for the very good information on why whole blood donations would be less useful to the Red Cross, they do not do as good a job of explaining this on their website or directly during blood drives. I especially understand how platelet donations are better because recipients are exposed to to many fewer donors vs platelets from whole blood units.
I still think that Red Cross needs to be more accurate about the reasons for the blood shortage and to improve their bandwidth so that they can collect more blood by all methods. Looking at appointments in my area for all types of donations, there are very few if any whole blood appointments but also not very many power red, platet, or plasma slots.
I used to donate as often as possible, every 56 days like clockwork, until the Red Cross decided that my blood was no longer desirable because I lived in England for a few years in the '80s. Ridiculous.
Then last summer I was looking for something to do in my spare time outside of my full-time job and thought volunteering for blood drives might be fun. I signed up, had several conversations with volunteer coordinators (obviously making clear when I would be available to work), went through a bunch of online training, and have since worked at exactly one blood drive, a 45-minute drive from my house and in a different state, because they almost never hold blood drives during evening or weekend hours. Also ridiculous.