PLASMA: it’s more than just liquid money. It’s more like … liquid gold
ZLB Plasma offers the opportunity to make money and save lives

Story by Jenna Gerling // Photography by Elizabeth Myers

I looked over at the ATM where a policeman stood, carefully watching over the day’s hodgepodge of customers: prospective students and dropouts, people who need a tank of gas, people with mouthfuls of decaying teeth.

I never felt more vulnerable than when I walked into Akron’s ZLB Plasma for the first time. All eyes on me — I stood at the reception desk for new donors and knew I was immediately labeled as a newbie.

At this point, a side of me was heavily considering making a mad dash out the door, but one thought kept me going: I’m helping people live.

. . . . .

ZLB is a company that regularly advertises to college students in the Daily Kent Stater, urging us to donate our plasma. A group of students who saw these ads were curious enough to actually donate, and then make a small living from it.

Steve Johnson, a fourth-year junior nursing major, is my roommate’s brother. In one of our visits to his house last year, a house that is most obviously inhabited by too many men, I learned he and four of his roommates would make extra cash by donating their plasma. To a place that even he, admittedly, wouldn’t want to bring his own sister to.

At the time, all four of his donating roommates were rethinking their regular trips to Akron ZLB. Johnson’s old roommate Craig Young, a senior business management major, was the first of the five to start donating plasma but hasn’t gone back in over a year.

“I started donating in 2006 and quit as of January 2007 because I got a real job: I bus at Luna’s now, a restaurant in Stow,” Young says. “But the whole time I went and donated I was unemployed and went twice a week every week  . . . making $60.”

Today, Johnson is the only one out of his old roommates who still tries to donate regularly.

“The only thing I could see that would make me stop going is once I’m out of school and making decent money and not so strapped with bills because I’m only working part time right now,” Johnson says.

Working as a hose manufacturer at TCH Industries in Twinsburg, Johnson still likes to have the extra cash that ZLB supplies him with for going out on the weekends, recreational use and to help save up for trips. His most current petty cash venture is for a new calculator for his business classes. His Walgreen’s Desktop instrument isn’t cutting it.

. . . . .

I’m not sure any of them knew just what they were doing. They mostly looked at plasma donation and saw easy money. But really, plasma is extremely valuable. It has a long list of benefits: helping treat burn victims and patients suffering from life-threatening conditions like hemophilia and other blood disorders, lung and liver failure, shock or trauma and immune deficiencies.

Plasma also has a number of vital functions in bleeding and infection control, containing proteins and antibodies that fight diseases.

Your blood is made up of a liquid portion and a cellular portion. The cellular portion contains white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets; the liquid portion is your plasma. Once your blood is extracted during a donation, it fills a chamber in a machine, spins and separates, returns the cellular portion to the donor and keeps the plasma.

Technicalities aside — that’s a lot of help for just a little bit of donors’ time, and ZLB donation centers from around the country are aiding in that process.

. . . . .

Waiting is the worst part of donating. This process can take anywhere from two hours on a good day or up to six hours — and that’s before you’re even ready to donate. Once you get to your chair the amount of time the needle is actually in your arm, if you’re a quick donor, is 45 minutes.

Hours add up because each time you donate, you wait to go into their medical screening rooms where they record your weight, blood pressure and the iron count in your blood. And if it’s your first time donating you are required to take a physical. Then you wait in another room for a chair to open up in one of their bays.

ZLB managers know this. That’s why they give money as a means of incentive, and why they have a policy for new donors that puts you ahead of everyone else in line so your wait is shorter.

You can make up to $60 for donating twice per week, depending on how much you weigh — because the more you weigh, the more you can give. The first weight class is 110 -149 pounds where you get $20 the first donation and $25 the second. The second weight class is 150-174 with $25 the first time and $30 the second. Last is for people weighing 174-400 pounds which gives you $25 the first and $35 the second. New donors can make $80 total for their first two donations as an added incentive.

Johnson said you only need to wait one day between donations, but the center only allows you to donate twice a week maximum. 

. . . . .

Ignoring the sideways and blatant stares, I tried to stay cool and keep to myself as I stood uncomfortably in the middle of the waiting room — awaiting the chance to jump at a vacant seat.

To pass the time, I started to pick up on people’s conversations around me. Here’s what I learned:

1. Don’t eat red meat or greasy, fried foods the night before. The fat from the foods you eat slows down your donation — and believe me, you really don’t want to have the needle in your arm much longer than the 45 minutes it already takes. Instead, eat fish or chicken.
2. Hydrate. Drink plenty of water the day before (and even right up to) your donation. If you are a new donor, you are required to take a physical where you give a urine sample. They will know if you haven’t had enough fluids and won’t let you donate until you’ve had enough water.
3. Holidays and generally the first of the month are times when ZLB is really congested because people need the extra cash to pay their bills.

On one of Johnson and Young’s frequent visits, one man in particular stood out to them.

Elaborately, Young began with, “I met a lot of interesting people there.”

Young entered a bay and sat by someone flipping through DVDs with his good arm.
“I got Stomp the Yard,” the man announced, advertising his bootleg movies to anyone who would listen.

He continued sorting through his book bag full of merchandise as he pumped his arm, slowly contributing to his donation.

Johnson encountered the same man while checking out at ZLB’s ATM, where donors are compensated.
“This guy was standing there, ‘DVDs man, I got some cheap DVDs here,’” he recalls. “I was confused. I didn’t know if he was talking to me because he was trying to talk under his breath.”

. . . . .

After I completed my initial screening and my physical, I was promised it wouldn’t take much longer until I could actually begin my donation. I was anxious as it was, waiting for nearly two hours already. I look around at people who have been waiting twice as long as I have and decided to stop complaining.

I stood there uncomfortably as my stomach flipped in anticipation, waiting to enter my assigned bay, when a man with sagging jeans and short-cropped hair looks at me suspiciously and asks if it was my first time at ZLB.

“Am I that obvious?” I replied

“Pretty much,” said the man, whose name was Rip.

My conversation is interrupted: Finally, my name.

"Jenna, bay two!," an exasperated woman calls out.

I turned the corner and peered through the glass windows. They all lay there, lined up like beached whales, reclined in their S-shaped couches.

Bustling about are phlebotomists (those who are trained in drawing blood and plasma), clad in plastic facemasks and long white coats with worn nametags. In my bay was Justin — my saint and savior of ZLB. As I hoisted my legs over the dingy couch and nervously clung to my belongings, he explained to me the donation process. But mostly, we talked about vegetables. Friendly, and more than willing to answer any question I had, he kept my mind off of the needle and the large empty tube I had to eventually fill with plasma by talking about how he enjoyed beefsteak tomato sandwiches and beets.

I began to feel more comfortable after finally making it to my destination, so to speak. Listening to Justin was like some sort of offbeat mantra that made my rigid inner and outer disposition loosen a bit.

Justin gives me a wad of paper towels and tells me to squeeze my hand into a fist and flex every few seconds to pump the blood out. I watch as my blood turns through the plastic tubes that run into the machine. It enters a chamber, that acts as a centrifuge, where the separated plasma exits through another tube and slowly fills up my collection container.

After a few minutes, my machine makes “tock” noises as it completes its cycle — the first of several. I know to relax my arm and allow the mixture of returned blood and anticoagulant to run into my vein. The foreign fluid turns its color in the tube from a deep scarlet into a bright, strawberry red.

Glancing at my container a short while later, Justin tells me in a surprised way I should be done in no time. Forty-five minutes at most. But this isn’t a shock for me; I always donate fast.

I begin to fantasize about whom I might be helping with my plasma. I’ve donated blood many times before, but somehow donating my plasma made me feel — good.

. . . . .

After my visit to Akron ZLB, no employees would be interviewed, but instead had me talk to someone at their corporate headquarters.

Christine Kuhinka, manager at corporate communications of CSL Behring (ZLB is a subsidiary of CSL), says there are five different therapeutic areas of life-saving products that produced from plasma.

- Coagulation disorders: This would include people with hemophilia.  If a hemophiliac doesn’t receive the necessary product, they could bleed to death.

- Critical care and wound healing: This product is for people who end up in the emergency room and may be bleeding to death. The product encourages in faster healing which results in faster treatment.

- Immunology: Some disorders involved in this category are primary immune deficiency. This is a disorder where part of the body’s immune system is missing or does not function properly so that individual can’t fight off infection.

- Pulmonary: People with genetic emphysema benefit from a product called an alpha-1 proteinase inhibitor, which is designed to treat patients so they can breathe.

“If we didn’t have individuals who donated plasma we couldn’t produce these products,” Kuhinka says. “Donors should feel really good about what they’re doing because they’re saving lives — they’re indirectly saving lives.”

. . . . .

“Did someone open a door?” I ask with chattering teeth. I tremor underneath my down coat which is draped over me like a cape, when a woman across from me appeared from under her Steelers jacket and said, “That’s just the fluids they’re putting back into you. It won’t last much longer.”

I shiver as I watch a new man fill the empty chair next to me. He comes into the bay, laughing and nodding at someone he knew across from him.

The difference between me, the newbie, and the regular is amazing. Regulars know all the staff by name and when they enter, shake hands and hug other regular donors. They make friends with everyone: reception, the people who measure your heart rate and weight, the people in the bays and even the policeman on duty. Regulars like the man next to me, Joe, requests that Cheryl, a phlebotomist, “stick him” with the needle because she never misses — unlike one of his last visits with a newer employee.

Slowly, the people in my bay filled their containers and emptied their seats. I carefully watched them, learning from them. And when it was finally my time 50 minutes later, I knew to raise my arm while pressing a thick stack of gauze to the wound while making a fist, clotting the hole and stopping the flow of blood. I put my sweater and coat back on, careful not to disrupt it.

As I was leaving, Rip joined my bay and I wished him good luck. He nodded at me and lay down.

Before I left, I made sure to take my receipt to ZLB’s ATM where I had to type in my birthdate and a short code. In exchange, I pocketed $40 for my time and a sense of satisfaction that plasma that had just been in my body could help save someone else’s.

Jenna Gerling is a senior magazine journalism major. This is her second story for The Burr.