Blood donor goes the extra mile when it comes to helping others.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE Over the past decade, Dave Nielsen has been a regular blood donor at the New Brunswick Affiliated Hospitals Blood Center in New Brunswick.
The 53-year-old Lori Street resident primarily donates platelets, the tiny cells that help blood to clot by sticking to the lining of blood vessels. In that 10-year span, as might be expected, he has donated an awful lot of platelets.
And how many is "an awful lot"?
Try 14 gallons.
That’s right, 14 gallons.
To put that into perspective, the average human body contains somewhere between 5 and 6 quarts of blood. Platelets represent only a very small percentage of that 5 to 6 quarts.
"They give you credit each time you donate for about a pint," Mr. Nielsen said Monday. "They may get a little more, a little less, but they say a pint. Eight pints in a gallon, that’s about 112 trips to the blood center."
And unlike donating a pint of whole blood, which takes about 45 minutes (including time for paperwork beforehand and a cup of juice and a cookie afterward), donating platelets usually takes more than two hours, said Mr. Nielsen, who works in North Brunswick as a marketing specialist for the United States Department of Agriculture.
That’s because the process for withdrawing blood components like platelets or plasma directly is a good deal more involved than simply withdrawing a pint of whole blood.
Maureen Kuhn, director of donor recruitment for the blood center, said platelet donation involves running an IV into a centrifuge, extracting a small amount of blood, spinning it to separate the components, removing the desired components and returning the remaining components to the donor.
The process is repeated until a full unit of platelets about 250 milliliters has been extracted, Ms. Kuhn said.
"It takes a long time, but the equipment is much quicker nowadays," said Mr. Nielsen, who began donating blood in 1971. "I would be on the machine for six hours in the ’70s."
Mr. Nielsen, whose 14-gallon milestone was celebrated with a party complete with a cake and a card signed by the staff of the blood center, said he started donating blood because of his family. His two sisters are nurses and his mother suffered from cancer, which is why he donates platelets. The cells are most often given to leukemia and other cancer patients to replace those destroyed by chemo and radiation therapy.
"I was definitely made aware of the need by my mother’s illness," he said. "But mostly I just get a warm feeling from doing it. I’ve had some bad (experiences donating) that I don’t want to repeat, but I really think that if you’re healthy, everyone should do it."
Ms. Kuhn said healthy blood donors are always needed at the center, but the need is especially great for components like platelets. She said Robert Wood Johnson and St. Peter’s University hospitals need about 20 platelet donors per day to meet their need and that direct platelet donation is a much more efficient way to meet that demand.
In order to get what’s known as a "therapeutic dose" (about one unit, or 250 milliliters for most people) from whole blood that is donated and broken down later, she said, the center would need to combine the platelets from eight to 10 donors. This increases the rate of rejection particularly among cancer patients, whose bodies are already weakened, she said.
By donating platelets directly, the way Mr. Nielsen does, a donor can give one to two therapeutic doses in one sitting, Ms. Kuhn said, which can make a huge difference to a leukemia patient undergoing chemotherapy, who typically needs three to four doses per week during treatment.
What’s more, she said, while a person can only donate whole blood once every 56 days, platelets can be donated every three days up to 24 times a year. The only drawback is the time commitment.
"But it’s really not that bad," Mr. Nielsen said. "They have the TV going, there’s a CD player, there’s even a computer monitor. I can surf the Web if I want. It’s really not a bad way to spend a day."
The New Brunswick Affiliated Hospitals Blood Center in New Brunswick is open Monday through Saturday from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Appointments are required for donations and can be made by calling (732) 235-8100, ext. 244.

