When blood is thicker than water!

I really did have a bit of a geek-gasm over this one! 

Today I issued granulocytes to a patient .... I'd never even seem them before (okay I've only been a BMS for 2 years) but my chief (he's been doing this for hundreds 😉 of years) had never seen them either .... So they're pretty rare!   

But what really amazed me about this case and why I had to tell you about it, was that these infection fighting granulocytes (white blood cells) were donated by the patients SON! Isn't that lovely!!

These cells have a very short half life of 24 hours so must be transfused very soon after donation! Therefore it would be ineffective for the national blood service to collect grans (yep we're on slang terms now :p) to hold as stock as they would more often than not be wasted! 

The donor would have been given a hormone the day before donation to stimulate the production of more white cells. 

This really did touch my heart. There he is poor old Mr. Patient going through the horrible ordeal that is chemo, causing his White cells to fall to a level where his body can no longer fight infection. When his own son (who's life you could say, he owes to his father) steps up to donate rather a lots of blood in what I can imagine is quite an uncomfortable scenario, to give his Dadio a fighting chance of survival and a more comfortable ride through his cancer treatment! 

A whole lot of butt to kick.

Morning lovelies, thank you so much for coming back to my blog!
As well as writing about my day to day work in the lab, I'd like to share with you some of my 'extra curricular activities' :p
So here we go.....

In four weeks time I'll be taking part the the Dirty Dozen obstacle course, so my training regime is being taken to a new level. I'm continuing with my usual gym classes but trying to add a few extra 5k runs and any other new exercises I can try (I love adding an insanity workout to my regime once a week).

A friend of mine recommend Kick Boxing as an energetic, tough, sweaty but fun workout so I went along for my first session last Thursday evening (the class is held at the pool hall above blockbusters it the bottom of Ashford highstreet).

From start to finish the class was a sweat Fest, even for a very warm day!
The instructor was fantastic, making me feel very comfortable despite the class being full of men! (A couple of girls and the friend who recommended the classes arrived just after the warm up.
The class was mainly cardio based but the crux of the class involved 10 circuits including burpees, star jumps and 4 rounds of punch bags where you just have to go at it as hard and fast as your body and mind will let you! I used the technique I've picked up in Boxercise for the punches which the instructor complemented me on before training me on the technique required for the kicks.
The whole class had an excellent and infectious energy enhanced by the music choice, from old school R&B to empowering Emili Sandé. An all round brilliant class full of energy & power that I can't wait to attend again as I watch my energy levels, technique and body shape improve!

And home for a nutrilean protein shake (more on this next week).

Just a short addition to tell you about a breakfast idea I tried this morning.
Honey Dew Melon! With Avocado??! Yep the combination actually works! This is an energy boosting breakfast packed with vitamins and good fats! (We like 'good' fat!) I also added chia seeds (fantastic for hydration), flax and linseed for a protein boost!



I hope you liked today blog, feel free to comment or make a suggestion, recipes for me to try or a gym class I haven't heard of! Thank you x

Good morning readers and welcome to my first blog post.  As this is the first time I've written here I'm a little worried I might babble on while I try to give you some of the background of things I discuss but I'll do my best to keep it short, and maybe even sweet!

I was inspired to start a blog through my job as a biomedical scientist in a blood transfusion lab. Often when I meet new people and tell them I work at a hospital they assume I'm a nurse, some have never even heard of Haematology. So I thought this would be an excellent way to give an insight to lab

Last Wednesday I worked the late shift, this involves running three sections, Haem main lab, coagulation and blood transfusion, completely alone for 3 hours. I've been working at this hospital for 4 months (and have 20 months of experience in my previous hospital - where I worked with a fantastic team!) so feel competent to work alone. This shift however was on another level!
I've never had so many full blood count samples racking up before my eyes.    
                                         

The way a haematology lab works is that patients are bled by nurses or phlebotomist on the ward or patients in the community visit their GP and a sample and test request is sent to the lab.
When I first started in this role any GP work was immediately sent to an alternative lab for testing whilst we continued to provide a service to the wards and emergency department. This has now changed, we test everything, meaning our workload has increased ten fold!
I take a lot of pride in my work, I want to make sure that patients results are available as quickly as possible, and I like to get the lab straight and up to date for the next BMS who takes over for the night shift ... Honestly I can laugh now, but this shift was like a mini workout, running from one end of the lab (blood transfusion) to the other (haematology) for three hours- yup I was sweating!
The worst moment was when I had a call from a doctor asking if blood he'd ordered hours ago was ready, I had to tell him it would be another 40 minutes whilst I test a 2nd sample (when issuing blood we must always have two identical groups on the computer system, for group confirmation, to ensure the correct patient has been bled and prevent fatal ABO incompatibility).
I was even brought to tears, only about 4 tears, I did manage to pull myself together using a whole lot of positive energy. Speaking out loud to myself, 'you can do this, you've been in these situations, you have it under control, you WILL get everything finished by 8pm when the night person comes in'. Unfortunately that wasn't quite the case, it was still a complete mess at 8 pm but I stayed until 9pm and almost everything was clear, that's the thing with CPP (continuous pathology processing) you've never really finished, it just keeps on going - I suppose it's like the saying 'A woman's work is never

I hope you enjoyed my first blog post, please feel free to leave me a comment!

Have a fab weekend 💚🙋💜

Steph