Detour

There has been a slight change of plan.

I donated platelets yesterday as expected. I discovered that they were on their way to Princess Margaret's hospital. It made me feel good to know that I was helping someone who had a tough case of Cancer.

Anyway, I ate lunch and called my sister. It turned out that she didn't need the stone and so I decided to just head to my Dad's instead of waiting around. I arrived at his house at about 6:30.

I got a call at about 9:00 about the upstairs apartment. The radiators were still on and it was hot in the apartment. I tried to deal with it as well as possible from 400 km away, but decided that the easiest thing would be to just head back.

I left this morning at 7:00 and arrived back in Toronto at 11:30. I called the heating company, but they weren't able to come and look at things until Tuesday. I couldn't just leave it until then so I turned off the furnace fuse and it appears as though the rads are cooling. I will leave things until Tuesday when the repairman will reinstall the adjustable thermostats on the upstairs rads.

I noticed that the air conditioner had been turned on and I felt the vents to see if it was working. I couldn't feel any cold air so I went outside to look at the machine and, sure enough, it was frozen up. I went back inside, turned it off to thaw and called the repairman to come and do a spring cleaning. He's supposed to arrive between 7 and 8 to fix it.

So I'm here until tomorrow night because my Dad's dog is supposed to get a haircut on Friday. He is working on Thursday morning and doesn't want to leave her in the car or drive home to pick her up before he heads to Toronto for a reunion that evening. I'm in charge of the dog until Thursday evening and then will be on my way to the farm so that I can go to a doctor's appointment on Friday morning.

I don't really see the point in making plans since everything just gets screwed up anyway.

Tuesday's Plan

I'm heading off to give blood and then I'm going to have lunch and head to my sister's house later on this afternoon. Actually, in order to avoid traffic, I will leave right after I eat and then drive to the burbs and watch a movie until she and her husband and baby get home from work. The truck that I'm driving is full of flagstones and they want to swipe a few of them before I take them to my Dad's house. I haven't seen my niece since Christmas and I should probably visit for a little while. There isn't much point waiting around all afternoon only to get stuck in rushhour traffic so I'll head to the movies and kill some time.

Blood Brother/Sister

I have long been a blood donor. I started making donations when I was in Montreal. It was easy to donate because clinics were held at McGill and it was easy to just stop in before or after class.

I stopped donating when I moved to Saskatoon. I think that it was simply because I was very busy and just didn't think about making time for it. Plus, it was out of my mind and any donation would require a special effort to plan and to attend.

I started donating again when I began work at the CBC. They hold clinics in the atrium every few months and again it was easy to attend. When I stopped working there, I still walked down and made donations there.

I thought that I should start going to a location that was closer to my house. I made my last donation about 10 blocks away from home and as I was recovering with my Peek Freans cookies and styrofoam cup with artificially peach flavoured sugar water, I read a pamphlet about platelet donation.

You can read the details here, but platelets are a part of blood cells that allow blood to clot. During the 90-minute donation, blood goes into a machine that removes the platelets. The blood is then returned to the body. Platelets are stored in the body and they are replaced in the blood quickly. Canadian Blood Services can make platelets by using the blood of as many as 8 donors, but this is costly and time consuming. The main difficulty is that platelets must be matched according to blood type, but also to HLA type. The chances of matching within a family is 1 in 4, and the chances of an unrelated match is 1 in 10,000. These are the same odds as finding a bone marrow match.

I have an appointment to donate platelets tomorrow. I was expecting to just have my platelets used as a blood product, but after getting a reminder call this morning, apparently there has been a match and my platelets will be going to a specific patient.

That makes me feel good and I expect that I will be donating frequently for a while now. I can donate every two weeks and so my arms are going to be a little cut up. At least I can know that my donation is going to make a difference to someone. I suppose that it always does, but this will seem more tangible.

Denouement

Days like this are the worst. I'm sad, but there isn't anything to do but wait. It was a good friend's wedding yesterday and I had a wonderful time. It was an amazing day and I had so much fun. The problem is after a year of looking forward to it and preparing, it's over. I always feel bummed out when a big event like this passes. It probably doesn't help that I had a terrible hangover.