Platelets help your blood to clot. They thicken it, I suppose, like corn syrup or something. If you're in a hospital, and they're looking for this sort of thing, you can find out exactly how many platelets a person has coursing around their bloodstream. One of many components of healthy blood that are, apparently, easy enough to count with the right tests.
Mine were low. Silly low. Slap on the forehead "duh" kind of low when you look at how quickly and profusely I would bleed when given the chance. We'll pick a number to pin on the wall. Let's say 400,000. That's the number -- the count -- you might expect to find in your average Joe Healthy Guy. It's okay to be a little lower. Three hundred thousand is fine. Two hundred thousand is, too, even down to, say 150,000 or so. Anything lower than that should be cause for concern. But there's a healthy range: 150,000 to 400,000.
Even after several blood transfusions on my way down from Lancaster, and then again on my way over from London, I arrived at the University of Washington with a platelet count of 30,000.
Hence the almost immediate arrival of a steady stream of small blackish-purple bags that would take their place with many others on the top of my rolling metal cart. That cart and I were inseparable during my hospital stays. We went everywhere together. We called it my "little buddy," always holding up bags of blood and chemo and platelets, rolling with me, hanging out, making sure everything dripped down just like it was supposed to.
Platelets kept coming and I kept bleeding. I would have bled more without them, I'm sure, but even still, they were only so effective. I needed my platelets back.
Laura started to donate her platelets. She'd describe the experience, watching her blood "spinning" through a couple of different tubes, extracting only the precious platelets, returning the rest. I'd always get the biggest boost from her platelets. Big sister taking care of me again. Family blood, better than the rest.
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