Blood Types

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Not to take away from all of the great uses for coconut milk, but the important part of knowing your blood type is if you need blood or someone you know needs blood.
They can 'straight-pipe' it from one person to another, but they don't like to do that unless they have none of a suitable type to use because of all of the tests they do on donated blood.
Hospitals do run low, or out, of blood, especially after a natural disaster because it only comes from people.
When someone needs blood; plasma, saline, Ringer's Lactate, or coconut water, will not do.
My Doctor: "what's his blood pressure?" Nurse:---------. Doctor: "what's his blood pressure?"
Nurse: <trying to whisper> "I can't get a pulse"
Me: "I promise I got one!!!"
The takeaway: when people need blood it is almost always a life-or-death situation.
Know your type! Save a life.
*I did give the required soapbox warning.
Giving directly from person to person never happens anymore, unless the military still does it. Do some research. There are hundreds of other antibodies/ antigens besides ABO and RH. Even if you tell us you are O positive, I gaurentee no blood will be given without us testing it first. Some people are mistaken about their blood type, or forget, etc. Back when the Vietnam vets were returning home, I can’t tell you how many were surprised at their blood type results because the military told almost all of them they were O Positive. I think the labeling and handling of hundreds of specimens were a little lax back then. There are very stringent ID checks when collecting blood for transfusion, donating blood, typing patients, cross matching blood. Checks and checks and checks. And special Blood Bank ID bracelets for further identification when giving blood to a patient. There’s no way you can say “I’m A Positive” and any blood bank will say ‘okay’ and give you a unit if A Positive blood. Given the wrong type could definitely be a death sentence.
 
Trivia:
I did not know they could "shotgun" blood into you if you need it bad.
I watched.
If you think they put a unit of whole blood on an IV pole and let it gravity feed into you like an IV, you are in for a surprise.
They set it up like that, and the nurse puts a blood-pressure cuff around the bag and starts pumping the bulb like crazy.
In less than 2 minutes the bag is empty and they are hooking up another one.
This is why blood and plasma are in bags and not in bottles like every other IV fluid.
Two units of blood into you in less than 4 minutes! :thumbs:.
While this can be done in a very emergent situation, that's not how it is typically done. One has to be careful not to blow the vein, especially if someone is dehydrated to the point of needing blood that bad b/c trying to find another vein while being critically dehydrated would be extremely difficult (even for a veteran IV therapist), especially when you add the stress of the traumatic situation. Going into a PICC line or a central line would be a different story, but I think that would be a huge stroke of luck. I've given transfusions many times (not in emergency situations), and protocol is to run at a very slow rate for 15 minutes to make sure there is no adverse reactions and then increase the rate of infusion after that point. It typically took a couple of hours to complete a one bag transfusion.

They can 'straight-pipe' it from one person to another, but they don't like to do that unless they have none of a suitable type to use because of all of the tests they do on donated blood

The takeaway: when people need blood it is almost always a life-or-death situation.
Another reason that it's tricky to give blood from person to person is that is more difficult to prevent clotting without the additives they use in the bagged stuff. If it's not continually flowing, blood has the tendency to want to clot. It's also near impossible to figure out how much blood is being transferred from one person to another. It would be a tricky thing.....I've never seen it done.

I gave blood transfusions all the time and none of them were immediate life or death situations.
 
Last edited:
I'm O-, so everybody loves me in a disaster. But only other O- people can help me.

When the SHTF, O- will probably go pretty quickly since anybody can receive it, and I'll be donating a lot. And as all that O- leaves the blood bank, that will leave none for me, and it's the only kind I can take. What's that saying? "No good deed shall go unpunished."

:(
Dang!
Now you got us all sounding like vampires!
 
My blood type was stamped in my dog tags in bootcamp. It's why I keep one on my key ring. If I'm ever in bad car accident I hope someone is smart enough to recognize a dog tag and what's on one... name, social sec#, blood type & religious preference, if I don't make it they'll know how to bury me.
 
My blood type is......C (Cuervo) But I am compatible with any Tequila.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top