The Big Day! Y Diwrnod Mawr!

On the day, it is safe to say I was bored! Woken up early for breakfast and then waited 2 hours for the nurses to come and get me! They take a few samples of blood and then quickly get you hooked up to the apheresis machine via a venflon in both arms and then they start the machine - quite simple! The blood will leave your right hand arm, go through the machine and then enters your body again through your left arm - again, simple! Whilst in the machine, the stem cells are collected by harvest scoops (4 in my case!) and placed into the bag (the red bag in the picture below). At any one time, only 150ml of blood is outside of your body! The blood tests are used to determine how long you need to hooked up to the machine and I was kept on for around 7 hours, and the 150ml of plasma is collected for storing the cells. My whole blood volume went through the machine 3.8 times - I think that's quite freaky to think about!

The big downside of this process is that the exit arm is very sensitive to movement! Moving my right arm even the slightest bit seemed to set the machine's alarms off. It's simply corrected by moving the arm into a better position or applying a torniquet, but after 7 hours I found it very frustrating! However, because of this movement issue, you get everything done for you - perfect! I watched tv and got fed and watered.

The two side effects I had were 1 nosebleed (due to the anti blood clotting medication) and some finger tingling (completely normal!). To fix this they gave me 24 chewable calcium tablets (12g!!).  After about 12 of them, it was getting annoying but the nurses didn't want to set up a calcium IV drip.

Stats:

• 1 nosebleed
• 1 burger 
• 2 arm bruises after venflons 
• 2 nurses
• 2 films watched 
• 3 profiteroles
• 4 episodes of Mock the Week watched
• 6 attempts at a venflon (slightly painful)
• 7 hours on the machine 
• 24 calcium tablets

But 1 not too painful, too boring process!

Thank you to both the nurses who conducted my apheresis - everything went smoothly and dealt with me being frustrated towards the machine towards the end!


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Mae'n hawdd dweud yr oeddwn wedi diflasu ar y diwrnod! Ar ôl deffro a chael brecwast cynnar, nes i aros am ddwy awr am y nyrsys! Roedd angen cymryd mwy o foteli gwaed, wedyn nath y nyrsys fy nghysylltu i'r peiriant - digon syml!

Mae gwaed yn gadael eich braich dde, mynd trwy peiriant, a dod nol mewn trwy eich braich chwith - digon syml! Yn y peiriant, fe aeth gwaed drwy broses lle mae llwy fawr yn pigo celloedd mêr bob hyn y hyn (4 gwaith i fi) ac yn eu rhoi mewn bag! Ar unrhyw adeg, ond tua 150ml o waed sydd y tu allan i'r corff, ond mae nhw yn casglu 150ml o plasma er mwyn cymysgu gyda'r celloedd wrth deithio i'r claf. Dros 7 awr, fe wnaeth fy ngwaed deithio trwy'r peiriant 3.8 gwaith - rhywbeth hynod o ryfedd i feddwl am!

Y brif drafferth gyda'r broses oedd bod y venflon yn fy mraich dde yn hoff o chwarae fyny, yn achosi alarymau i ganu! Roedd modd cywirio hwn drwy addasu lle roedd fy mraich neu rhoi tourniquet ymlaen, ond ar ôl 7 awr roedd unrhyw alarwm yn hynod rwystredig. Fe ges i 1 'nosebleed' ac ychydig o 'tingling' yn fy mysedd (sy'n gwbl arferol). I gywiro hwn, fe ges i,  dros y diwrnod, 24 (12g!!) tabled calciwm i'w cymryd - sydd yn llawer, ond nid oedd y nyrsys am roi IV drip.


Yn gyffredinol, nid oedd yn boenus! Roedd yn hir iawn ac erbyn awr 7 roeddwn i wedi llawer diflasu, ond llawer haws na 'general anaesthetic' a llawdriniaeth!! Roeddwn yn teimlo'n flinedig iawn y noson honno ac ychydig wedi dadhydradu.

Nifer o foteli wedi'u cymryd ers y neges gyntaf: 30!
Number of bottles of blood taken throughout the process since the text: 30!