{"id":88,"date":"2010-08-18T15:09:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T20:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/?p=88"},"modified":"2010-10-15T22:35:12","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T03:35:12","slug":"return-fluids-to-user","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/18\/return-fluids-to-user\/","title":{"rendered":"Return Fluids to User"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last year or so, our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloodservices.org\/\">local blood bank<\/a> has been encouraging donors to give what they call &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scbcinfo.org\/donating\/donating_two_units.htm\">double red<\/a>&#8221; donations, rather than regular old whole blood.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve done it a couple of times now.<\/p>\n<p>The Good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You get to lie down on a heating pad.\u00a0 It&#8217;s awfully nice.\u00a0 The apheresis machine (which centrifuges your blood, keeps what it wants and returns the rest to you) gives you extra saline, and it&#8217;s cold.<\/li>\n<li>My employer <a href=\"https:\/\/nessie.uihr.uillinois.edu\/cf\/comp\/index.cfm?Item_id=3295\">gives time off<\/a> to donate blood.\u00a0 That&#8217;s awfully nice of them.<\/li>\n<li>You can go in half as often as whole blood donation and still give the same quantity.\u00a0 After all, most of what hospitals need is your red blood cells; they&#8217;re happy for you to keep the rest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, regular blood donation is pretty straightforward: Someone sticks a needle in you and waits for the bag to fill up.\u00a0 Then they walk you over to a kitchenette, holding your arm in case you start to faint, and you celebrate with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.littledebbie.com\/\">a snack<\/a>.\u00a0 But apheresis involves a more intimate encounter with technology.<\/p>\n<p>The Weird:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can taste <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fenwalinc.com\/En\/Pages\/Products-ALYX.aspx\">the machine<\/a>.\u00a0 (I&#8217;m sure this is true for being on an IV drip, too.)\u00a0 When it puts electrolytes back into you, they come through a fresh vinyl tube.\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t take long for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bisphenol_A\">the fumes<\/a> to spread throughout your circulatory system, including the back side of your taste buds, so that it feels like you just ate a new inflatable pool toy.\u00a0 Does that mean we are constantly tasting ourselves from the inside, but we we&#8217;re just used to it?<\/li>\n<li>It can make your teeth tingly.\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phlebotomist\">phlebotomist<\/a> explained that, with the red cells, I&#8217;m losing calcium from my blood, and my body is drawing it out of my bones and teeth.\u00a0 But that&#8217;s okay, there&#8217;s a remedy, she said, and gave me a couple of Tums to chew on.\u00a0 It seemed to work\u2014the tingling went away.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A few weeks ago, I went in for my fourth double-red donation.\u00a0 I was well-hydrated, and I had just gone out to lunch with my Mom and had a nice big plate of chicken fajitas to prepare.\u00a0 The blood donation folks hooked me up to the machine, and everything was going well, until the phlebotomist called a supervisor over to look at the machine.\u00a0 She was doing her best Professional Calm.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; the supervisor asked, in a half-whisper.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s saying 12\/09.&#8221;\u00a0 They both inspected the machine&#8217;s little LCD display.\u00a0 &#8220;This one came out of the same box I&#8217;ve been using all month.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s expired.\u00a0 We can&#8217;t use it,&#8221; the supervisor admitted.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What should I do?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll have to give him his fluids back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How do I do that?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Select &#8216;Return fluids to user&#8217; in the menu.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Man, if I ever get to use &#8220;Return fluids to user&#8221; in a computer interface, I will have truly lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every user interface has to handle error conditions, even blood apheresis machines. <a href=\"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/18\/return-fluids-to-user\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-techno-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neolefty.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}