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 !
In: 1
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.
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