The Wonders of Coagulation

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made..." ~Psalm 139:14

Yes, in case you could not tell from the title, I am a nursing student. I'm not going to shy away from it. God has shown me some of the wonders of the human body through Anatomy and Physiology, and all I can say is that He truly is amazing for having created us.

So I am offering a slight warning. I'm going to talk about the amazing-ness of blood clotting. I will not post any pictures (mainly because I hate using pictures from the internet and I don't particularly feel like bleeding for a camera), so those with squeamish stomachs are safe. I will, however, talk in-depth about blood clotting and do my utmost best to point out the beauty in this single body system. And it's not even a single body system. It's a very small portion of the circulatory system, but every part of blood clotting is so intricate and amazing.

So it starts with an injury. I bashed my knee when I slipped on Saturday at work. I broke a couple small blood vessels (the bruise on my knee is evidence enough) near my patella (knee). Immediately, to prevent major blood loss into the tissue around my knee, the blood vessels constricted. Little fragments of cells called platelets noticed that there was a gap in the blood vessel when they could see the collagen that is right outside the vessel walls, and they started sticking to the collagen and to each other. They quickly formed a platelet plug. While they are sticking, they do something called degranulate - which basically means they release their contents, including factors that call white blood cells and platelets (to keep up the sticking cycle) to the site, as well as triggering coagulation and more constriction of the blood vessel.

Thus begins coagulation. There is an extrinsic mechanism and an intrinsic mechanism that MUST happen in order for a clot to form. Both include a cascade. One factor activates another factor which activates another factor, which activates two more factors, which one activates another factor, and the other goes back in the cycle and keeps activating other factors. I think I just confused myself with that sentence. But you get the picture. If ONE of these factors does not work properly, the entire cascade is thrown off. That's how intricate this system is. Isn't it cool? Scientists call it "irreducible complexity" which is fancy language for saying that this system is so complex that it cannot have steps taken out without disrupting the whole system. Bleeding disorders like hemophilia or von Willebrand disease occur when one of the factors isn't working properly or there isn't enough to trigger the rest of the reaction.

I guess you could look at it as a chain reaction where one of the chains explodes in a different direction. Or with dominoes, if you set them up in a line where one will tip down one and then another, and so on and so forth, and one of the dominoes is set a little farther than the others, either the tipping will stop sooner than you wanted, or it will stop altogether. This is where I wish I had a set of dominoes and a camera...

It's so cool! The human body is made in a beautiful way so that each system works. The heart itself has backup mechanisms that will kick in if something doesn't work right. We don't bleed to death. What's more, our body automatically fixes stuff. When I stub my toe (or bruise my thigh...) I don't have to tell my platelets and clotting factors, "Hey, guys I could use a little help here..." I don't have to tell my heart to beat at the intensity it does. I don't have to tell my body to do a lot of the things it does. It's really quite amazing. Anyone who cannot see the wonder and beauty in the body is a fool, indeed.

Our God certainly is creative. *love*

Donations and the Exhaustion Later

Yesterday was a pretty big step for me on several levels. First of all, I had my first college exam in Chemical Science. Second, I had my first lab practical for Anatomy and Physiology. But the most important (probably) is that I donated blood for the first time. This is pretty big since in the past I haven't done too well with things like... shots. Oops. But yesterday I did okay. I felt a little lightheaded for a minute or so, but the nurse put my feet up and gave me some Pepsi to sip. That helped a bunch. And I lay there for a while, even after they were done collecting, just to make sure I was stable enough to stand and not collapse in a heap on the floor. That didn't happen, so I was free to go, collect my XL T-shirt (yes, I now have a new sleep shirt >_> ), grab a doughnut hole, and be on my way.

Unfortunately, "being on my way" meant many things in the evening. I had an SI (supplemental instruction) for A&P to study for the exam that was this morning (it helped a lot) at 7:00. I lost track of time, so I only had a sandwich for dinner en route to SI. SI went until 8:00. The first class for Ballet I started at 7:30, but I dashed from SI to ballet, praying that the teacher was nice enough to be okay with it since it was for school (she was). And then did bar work and other dancing things until 9, when I hurriedly changed and ran off to my job in the kitchen. We were done within an hour.

It wasn't until I stepped into the room that I realized how exhausted I was. I had no energy to do anything but sit on the floor against the bed. I didn't even feel like climbing up into my own bed, for I'm on the top bunk. Then I realized I had not thought through the day very clearly. I should have taken it easy after giving a pint of blood, and eaten a "hearty meal" (so the pamphet says) that day. I had a sandwich, and I was running for three hours. Fantastic. Good job, Sarah.

Even though I realize I was not thinking clearly yesterday, I did enjoy dance. It's been at least seven, maybe eight years, since I last took ballet, and three of those years have been spent learning Hebraic dance. It's very different. But surprisingly, once I stretched out and relaxed into the atmosphere of ballet again, I felt great. There are definitely a lot of things that Israeli dance is much more slack on, but I have confidence that at the end of the year, I will be able to improve my Israeli dancing style, too, and be more graceful, fluid, and also improve my lines. :D

So! Despite my stupidity on my first day of dance, I'm rather excited about the upcoming year and dance. Oh, speaking of which, I need to share a neat story from the past few weeks.

A few days before I left for college, my friend Aaron from dance told me about a girl named Ashley who was going to Messiah, and that she loved to dance. With that tidbit of information (along with her last name, which I won't post here due to the nature of the internet), I set out for school hoping to run into this girl. I looked her up on Facebook, and the first girl to come up was in the network of the school I had gone to. Strange, I thought. That couldn't possibly be her, I would have remembered her. Then her name started to pop out. We were both honors students. Outdoors club. So on and so forth.

I finally sent a friend request. It was with joy several days later that I received a note from her. We met for lunch, and have been friends since. With that, we're hoping to host a dance workshop to teach people Israeli dance. It is my hopes to start a class through the dance ministry for it next year or beyond. But this is a good start. :)

Now to see what God would have me do with all of this. :) Shalom!