Donating platelets has perks

It's the middle of the morning and Anne Brodke is all stretched out and snuggled underneath a warm blanket, her cell phone is turned off and she's reading her favorite book.

Being selfless is not without its advantages.

Anne is a regular at the Associated Regional & University Pathologists (ARUP)c blood donor lab at Research Park. Every other month or so you can find her here donating her blood and, more specifically, her platelets.

A couple of years ago she came to give blood in the conventional manner and found out about the constant need for platelets — the tiny cells within the blood stream that make blood clot. Platelets are in particular demand among cancer patients undergoing treatments such as chemotherapy.

Donating platelets is more complicated than giving whole blood. It involves a machine that separates the platelets out of your blood and then returns the platelet-less blood back to your body.

The nice part about that is you don't lose any red blood cells in the process.

But it does take a while — at least an hour to donate one unit of platelets. Sometimes two hours.

So platelet donors stretch out and get comfortable. They read a book or magazine or watch a movie. At ARUP, they have 2,000 movie titles on hand for that very purpose.

"Personally, I like to use the time to catch up on my reading," says Anne, looking up from a copy of "Stones From the River" by Ursula Hegi.

Anne downplays the service she's providing. "I'm a stay-at-home mom with kids in school, so I can do this," she explains. "It's just become part of my routine. And if I forget to come, the recruiters will call just to remind me. They're very friendly but very relentless."

Her husband, she says, is a physiian, "So I'm aware a little bit of the need."

Anne doesn't look old enough to have teenagers, but she does — a 14-year-old and 16-year-old, who for the moment are totally on their own

"This is good for my kids, too," she smiles. "They know they can't reach me when I'm doing this."

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In the room next door, where half a dozen telephone recruiters sit in their carrels and repeatedly run through their lists of previous platelet providers, they can't say enough about the Anne Brodkes of this world.