This is something I haven’t done before, but it’s not particularly exclusive to the Twin Cities. However, since it is a new experience for me, I figured I’d talk about it.
My brother has talked about donating plasma before. It’s spending money, or lunch money, or emergency funds. So last week, I went to a local plasma donation center and signed up.
For those who don’t know, plasma is the liquid part of your blood. It’s important for your circulation, but not as important as red blood cells. However, that same plasma can be used to create medication. Your body can stand to lose a little plasma every now and then, just like it can stand to lose a little blood now and then. But since the plasma isn’t as important to your circulation, you can lose more of it at a time. At most, you can give about a pint every visit, and you can donate twice a week.
If you want to get signed up, keep in mind that your first visit will take a while. Because they’re messing around with your fluids and your fluids are important for you as well as for their future use, it’s important that you are healthy going into the procedure. All added up, between signing up, safety information, a quick physical, screening (done every visit), and the actual procedure, it took almost 2 hours. I’ve been informed that it will take only a little over an hour on future visits.
The procedure itself isn’t painful. The worst part for me was that I had to be constantly squeezing my hand, in order to keep blood flowing. That’s not something I usually do, so my hand muscles were complaining. Other than that, they drew out a lot of my blood, spun out the plasma, added in saline, and pumped it all back in. No dizziness, no muscle weakness, nothing.
The first few visits at this particular clinic give a bonus, and once the bonus is over, the regular pay can get up to $300 per month. It’s not living money, but for 2.5 hours per week, it’s pretty good extra money.
That's Pretty NEET 