Dr. Pepper

Kaleigh, whenever we encountered a specimen showing nice rouleaux I would gather all the old lab specs on the patient, pool them and freeze aliquots to torment future generations of students. You could also have your buddies in Hematology be on the lookout for them as well.

Sorry for the delay but I've been retired for 2 years and have not been hitting this site much. We would order the blood on a new accession number that also had a nonreportable test SAMPLE USED to record/trace the original sample.

Sigh - I guess I'll go bck to cleaning off my workbench in the cellar....

Although the baby seems to be doing well, it would indeed be nice if the father's cells were available to test with the eluate (and Mom's serum). Or you could have a reference lab take a look for antiboduies to low-incidence antigens. Identifying the antibody might also be helpful in managing future pregnancies which probably would have a 50% chance of the same serologic scenario. I would think that no clinical signs of HDFN are no guarentee that the next child would fare as well. And if nothing else, the ex-blood banker in me would just want to know what the darn thing is!

The accompanying quote was "Cute little s..ts, aren't they?"

This does have a lab slant. And don't tell me I obviously have too much time on my hands now that I'm retired! Doc1.docx

Thanks to all for the kind wishes. I have 1.6 days left to try to break people of the habit of leaving things on my desk. With no replacement in sight, it may take a bit for someone to do something about them. We had dinner last night with an old friend who gave me a nice bottle of pinot noir and a splendid T-shirt which reads: I AM RETIRED Don't ask me to do a damn thing I'm going to wear it under my dress shirt tomorrow and show it off at the obligatory retirement tea in the cafeteria. (I've always wondered why they give you a clock. I thought time was supposed to have no meaning when you're retired....)

Thanks Malcolm. I will certainly give Sue your regards, and definitely will drop in to the site. I plan on staying active in our local professional society for this year at least, will offer CAP my services for a couple of freelance inspections a year, and try for a couple of overseas volunteer gigs a year. Otherwise, it's time to spoil the grandkids, indulge in hobbies, and chip away at a honey-do list that's been accumulating for, oh, some 43 years..........

I am winding up 43 years of blood banking on Friday. I will still drop in to PathLabTalk from time to time but I'm not sure how frequently that will be. I would like to thank all of our BB Talk family for sharing their knowledge, insights, advice, hints, constructive criticism and everything else that makes this site so wonderful to us BB geeks. I would particularly like to thank Cliff, without whom this site would not exist, and Malcolm, for being himself, a consummate blood banker and consummate gentleman (even when he's dressed in my pajama bottoms - but that's another story!)

Just had an AABB assessment - her take on this subject was to follow the manufacturer's recommendations to the letter. If they say go one way or the other, go that way. If they give you options, then you can take your pick.

You have probably transfixed the vein, half in and half out, so the bag is filling but they're also bleeding into the surrounding tissue, as David suggested. Goodchild's advice about the shallow angle is right on. Your insertion should be like tracing a J that's lying on its back. Down and in to puncture the vein, then slide the needle a bit into the vein parallel to the arm. It's a big lumen to the needle and needs to be all the way in the vein.

Mollyredone, you are lucky indeed. And they trust you enough to input the data that you have found yourself! Our two local suppliers will gladly furnish you antigen-negative units - for a price, despite that they are undoubtedly going through a computer search of historical typings.

Yes to what everyone has said. We calculate the number of units you would need to screen, with average luck, and start with that. If we have bad luck and don't find enough, we recalculate and look some more. If we find extra units, we celebrate our good luck and buy a Powerball ticket on the way home. Our LIS doesn't really have a convenient way of making a digital worksheet, so we have a paper worksheet to record our results, and to copy from to enter results on the units in the LIS. We order the appropriate # of bill-only tests (as in Goodchild's x 27 example). We also record on the worksheet the spec # we billed on. If we were ever audited we could easily demonstrate why we were billing the 27 CPT codes. It's also an easy mechanism to review the results and to catch the wastrel who does the 20 K typings to find the one unit, or types for c and E simultaneously and finds a half dozen E(-) units that we can't use because they're c(+)......... Besides telling the LIS, we put stickers on the units indicating the typing results, and that the typings have been billed out.

Welcome back!

I'm sorry I missed it - I'll be 165 when it rolls around again.