To Sky re post surgery internal bleeding

[Guest guest]

I was advised by my surgeon's office to give one unit two weeks prior

to surgery and the second unit one week prior. I recovered fine from

the first " donation " -- when I gave the second unit my hematocrit had

bounced back to normal. But I gave the second unit after all my pre-

op tests so no one knew I had not " bounced back " from that one.

I understand now that you really need several weeks to recover from

banking blood. I had never donated before and hadn't researched this

(unlike everything else connected with my surgery). I do remember

being very tired and somewhat spacey the rest of the day after I gave

the second unit.

So I don't know the exact time period to tell you. Ask your doctor

about it -- I've heard opinions since the surgery from several nurses

and another doctor (a cardiologist I had to see for something

unrelated) that banking your blood should be avoided if possible, for

exactly these reasons -- that people can end up being anemic or even

just overly fatigued going into surgery. And as I might have

mentioned, I did not lose any significant amount of blood during the

surgery itself.

Good luck!

Sunny

>

> > When I was in the recovery room after my surgery, my blood

> pressure

> > remained suspiciously and stubbornly low. It turned out that I

was

> > anemic (due to banking my own blood, which turned out to be

> > unnecessary since I lost virtually no blood during the surgery),

> but

> > it took several hours to sort it out. The big concern was whether

> I

> > was bleeding internally, though everyone thought not since I felt

> > good, was alert, etc. etc.

> >

> > Sunny