I’m about to go to the hospital to receive 2 units of blood, because I’m dangerously low on something (red cells?) .
It’s not my first time, but I always wondered, how does the body have space for an extra litre of blood in your system? What happens to the veins? Do they just stretch out a bit to accommodate? Also, what about having too much of other stuff after this? Like plasma? I am so confused by how all of this works.
I do know that there must be a way for the body to balance itself out afterwards, as usually I need to urinate quite badly afterwards 😅
Please help make light of this, I am not looking forward to being stabbed again ( I have extremely hard veins to find) and I need the distraction, and the answer!
Thank you !
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From my understanding of what you described as you being low, think of it as adding oil to your car when it’s low. Your body is always replacing your blood. Sometimes your body can’t produce enough blood. Usually that’s followed by testing to find out why. Hope all goes well with you.
You have a liquid and solid part of your blood. You are lacking the solid. If you require a transfusion is is generally more severe than if you needed an iron infusion, but I don’t know your story. Your kidneys will help regulate yiur blood volume via urination.
Some patients don’t have space becquse of things like kidney issues and go into hypervolemic shock because their closed circulatory system doesn’t have the space to put things.
When patients need large volumes of product like albumin put into them, they have plasma taken off – the cells are returned and the good stuff is effectively put in to replace the volume that is lost – and it wont send them into shick because total volume remains unchanged.
Yes! The soft components of your body are stretchy and resilient. It’s like how you can drink a lot of water without bursting like a water balloon.
>Also, what about having too much of other stuff after this? Like plasma?
Donated blood is typically separated out into different parts, so if you just need red blood cells, they’ll give you red blood cells with a lot of the plasma removed. But [it is possible to “overload” your body with too much blood volume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfusion-associated_circulatory_overload). The solution to this would be giving the patient diuretics, but if you can go pee on your own you will be fine.
>I do know that there must be a way for the body to balance itself out afterwards, as usually I need to urinate quite badly afterwards 😅
That’s literally it – excess fluid is filtered by the kidneys and released as urine. Your spleen acts as a reserve and can hold a little bit extra blood, but otherwise the water (vast majority of the blood volume) is purged while the goodies (RBCs, platelets, whatever you’re missing) stay behind.
This is also why sometimes if you get really cold you have to pee. Your body clamps down on your extremities blood vessels and forces everything to your core, which becomes overfilled and purges excess fluid to compensate.
You’re essentially a balloon filled with blood. It’s bad if that pressure goes too high or too low.
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