50/100 WORDS

Boom! We’re Exchanging Your Plasma

Thrifty Word Challenge 100: #19 and 50: #40: Plasma

It looks like the saga of my new autoimmune illness and the quest to find a treatment to control it still has a way to run. The latest episode is that my doctors made the decision to step up therapy in an effort to get my life — and body — back to the old normal.

Will it work? I know not. I had a visit from an anesthetist, to tell me what I could expect from having a cannula inserted in my groin. Nice.

Then my doctors came to explain in detail why they are suggesting this next step of plasma exchange, and what the pros and cons are. Plasma Exchange, “also known as plasmapheresis, is a way to “clean” your blood. It works sort of like kidney dialysis. During the treatment, plasma — the liquid part of your blood — gets replaced with plasma from a donor or with a plasma substitute.”

As luck would have it, I have a friend who also has myasthenia gravis, and whose condition is maintained beautifully by this medical procedure. My hope is that it has a similar positive effect on me.

What about other kinds of plasma? We know we have some in our blood. But it’s also one of the four fundamental kinds of matter. Do you know it’s plasma technology that makes our mobile phones possible? Do you have any plasmatic experience? Ever been hit by lightning? Share any stories you have, but make them thrifty!

Plasma — 50 or 100 words — GO!

Please choose either the fifty-word or 100-word challenge, not both. See the guidelines for your chosen challenge below.

Remember, in order to be considered for the challenge, you need to write exactly 100 or 50 words (contractions such as ‘you’ll’ and ‘y’all’ count as one, as do articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ and all 23 auxiliary verbs ‘am’ ‘is’ ‘are’ etc. Hyphenated words count as one word.) The editors reserve the right to add or remove words to ensure the exact word count. Please keep an eye on your tags as laid out in the submission guidelines above.

Please use the kicker 100 WORDS or 50 WORDS and ‘Thrifty Words 100 Challenge #19: Plasma or ‘Fifty Word Challenge #40: Plasma’ as your subtitle and submit by 3 pm BST on Saturday 5th June (extension). All stories submitted by the deadline will be released later on Saturday in the weekly roundup.

Need inspiration? Here’s last week’s roundup, and a riveting 15-minute TEDtalk on plasma.