Limited Resources and the Big Adventure

Fluffy's doing much better! He's eating well, the swelling in his left leg is slowly going down, and he's wanting to move around more. We're trying to avoid too much of that until he's fully healed, of course.

When the blood bank suspended operations last July (thanks to a bad economy - you can't run a business that lives and dies by delivery when gas is $4.50/gallon) we knew we were on borrowed time. We had spun enough cryoprecipitate to last Fluffy through July, had a bunch of FFP in storage (which is good for up to 1 year at -20 according to US standards), and should have been able to hold out for a good long time if need be. We had half the stuff in Florida, and half was shipped to Arizona. We bought an extra freezer and it was FULL!

Well, since Fluffy's injury I am now looking at the bottom of that freezer. Getting a severe hemophiliac through neurosurgery requires a lot of cryo! Add to that he is now a wobbly 50-lb. toddler learning to walk again who bruises when he bumps into things and ... well, you get the idea.

Of course, in the last few months much of our cryo has 'expired' as well. I put that in quotes for a couple of reasons. The expiration dates for cryo and FFP are based upon human data for blood stored at -20. There's some evidence from Europe that blood stored at -30 (we store at -30) will be good for up to three years. The problem is, of course, that the factor that Fluffy needs - Factor VIII - is one of the most fragile of the factors.

As it stands, we have about 40 more unexpired units left, plus 30 or so more 'expired' units (stored at -30). Normally, Fluffy goes through 2 units/month - doesn't sound so bad, right? Well, the problem is is that we're going through it a lot faster right now. Hopefully that's temporary - a lot hinges on his continued progress and learning to walk again.

So we're somewhere between a few weeks (worst case given the plasma we have) and a few months (given the time we have left on the cartons till expiration).

Rick is going to head out to Florida this week and get our centrifuge, and get it out west. Then we're going to scramble to find some donors here - we have about 10 potential donors to start, but we don't know how many will be good donors, how many will pass infectious disease testing, etc. We *DO* know this is pretty much Fluffy's only option at this point.

Of course, we'd been scheduled to do this for months. We had booked time in January to move the blood bank stuff here, but Fluffy's illness sort of messed everything up. His sharp increase in plasma consumption has made things dicey, too - now we're suddenly on a much stricter timetable.

Rick probably leaves sometime tomorrow, after our plasma shipment arrives from Fort Lauderdale. I'm having it shipped in two parts in case something bad happens to part of it. Rick will fly out, try to find someone to help him move the centrifuge (it's heavy, yikes!), and get it to the person we bought it from, who will service it and get it ready for the journey westward. Then Rick is throwing everything on a truck and driving it out here. My job during that time is to keep an eye on Fluffy, not get fired from MY job, and get enough of the garage cleared out we've got room for everything.

If anyone on either end wants to volunteer some help that would be great. We need mover types in Florida, box-juggler or dog-watcher types in Arizona, and enough luck that we can pull this off.