Blog 656 – 06.07.2017

Blood, The Magic Liquid That Keeps Our Bodies Alive

It is mosquito time in Wisconsin where I have been living and working for over a year now. These little vampires want to suck your blood. It is what keeps their little bodies alive and yours and mine but how seldom we give much thought to the rivers of blood that flow throughout our bodies delivering oxygen, water, food and medicine that our own body manufactures to all of our body’s cells. In addition to that monumental task the blood also is filtered through the liver where toxins and waste products that have been picked up throughout the blood’s journey through the body are filtered out. We are as one inspired writer once wrote, “Fearfully and wonderfully made.”

As a boy in church we sang, “There is power in the blood.” Whatever your particular religious beliefs most all of us can agree that there is life in the blood. The reason chest compressions are still recommended for drowning victims and electrical shock victims whose hearts have stopped beating is that if the blood stops following to the brain for eight minutes brain damage and death will occur. Our brain needs the river of blood flowing to it and through it to keep doing its wondrous job.

And anytime a body springs a leak it is critically important to plug that leak before the life literally drains out of the body. “Stop the bleeding” was the critical first step in all of the life saving first aid courses I ever took from Boy Scouts, to the Military, to Industrial Safety Training. Fact is the old school definition of whether a soldier should report for Sick Call was “bleeding, broken bone, or a fever” in that order. Aches and pains, scraps and bruises hardly registered on the military Richter scale of medical importance. But blood is of such vital importance to military personnel that in my day they asked us every pay day if we wanted to give blood as they handed us our pay. They still say of donating blood, “Give the gift of life.”

Next time you cut yourself shaving or prick your skin causing it to bleed say a “thank you” for the Red River, and Red Sea without which we would all be looking for a new place to live.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White