Thread: blood rejection
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Old Wed Jun 16, 2010, 05:35 PM
squirrellypoo squirrellypoo is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: London, UK
Posts: 458
Is it platelets he's rejecting? I was doing that for months. If you've had lots of transfusions, your body can develop antibodies against some variations of platelets, so you fight against them. For me, I knew when I was rejecting the bag because an hour or so after my platelet transfusion, I'd get REALLY sleepy.

So they usually give everyone "pools" of platelets, which means that the platelets in one bag come from a bunch of different people, so there's tons of different antigens floating around in there. Most people don't have problems, and this is the only kind they ever get. If you have a bad reaction, you'll get given piriton & hydrocortizone before each subsequent transfusion to stop the reaction, but if your counts don't jump after the transfusion (ie: you've rejected/attacked them), the next step is to give you "single donor" platelets. In those, all the cells in the bag come from just one person, so there's way less antigens, so less of a chance you've built up antibiodies against those. But if you're unlucky like me, you'll STILL reject the single donor platelets, which means you require HLA-matched platelets, which are hugely expensive and a logistical nightmare, because they need to get donors who are very closely genetically matched to you to donate at the right time when you need them and get them whisked to you before they expire. And even then, some donors work better than others. So it was procedure for all HLA-matched transfusions that they'd take a blood count an hour after the transfusion to make sure the count incremented, and it was noted down in the records that that particular donor worked well for this patient.

(ugh even just typing this all out makes me so grateful I don't have to do this anymore!)

I hope this helps!!
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36/F - 1984 SAA treated with ATG [complete remission until] Oct 08 - burst blood vessels in eyes and low platelets; Jan 09 - AA & hypo-MDS; July 09 - BMT (RIC MUD PSCT) July 10 - 10k for Anthony Nolan (1yr post BMT! 53:48) Sep 10 - Wedding! I've run 5 marathons now!! (PB 3:30!)
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