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Sanguinarian -> RE: Please keep me company!! (1/22/2009 5:38:03 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: CFslaves
why do you have to feed on blood sang?
and hello all
: grins: I love it when people ask me this. Anyway, I have two hereditary blood disorders. If you noticed, my skin is about as pale as milk, when it actually shouldn't be. That, as my doc told me, is caused by Acute Intermittent Porphyria. Basically it means that UV bothers my skin if I don't take proper precautions. I have a few minor scars on my face where I've burned to the point of blistering after ten minutes in the sun. So for that, I take a vitamin supplement to increase my resistance to UV exposure. All my makeup has UV protection in it and from early spring to late fall, I use lotion with UV protection, on under the sunscreen.
The second one is pernicious anemia. Usually this is treatable by vitamin supplements. In my case, it is my bone marrow that won't absorb Iron, and the body needs iron to make blood. But for the body to absorb iron, it also needs things like selenium and B. I also don't absorb manganese well, which helps blood production, which leads to other things not being absorbed properly either! : chuckles ruefully:
So, if the vitamin route doesn't work, they move on to IV blood transfusion. Lemme tell you, that is no fun at all. However, when they started doing that, it would take 6 units of blood, for me to absorb just one. I ended up with a subdermal hematoma ( huge freaking bruise, swelling, under the skin) the size of a softball in my upper arm every time. And they wanted to transfuse me every 2 weeks.
I still have to deal with the IV transfusions, but my doc, who was older than dirt at the time, did a little testing on the side. The lack of all those vitamins has induced me to eat very rare meat. I told my doc that, and he suggested I try beef blood. That actually helped, and lifted my blood levels a bit, because ( According to him ) I was getting some of what I needed in a form my body could use immediately, absorbing through the intestinal lining with little difficulty.
When I was in school, a few of my friends would donate blood to me regularly, when they saw me in walking-dead-form and I looked particularly bad. Which was how I made it through school without being hospitalized, between my friends, and the beef blood. Kinda weird, I know :P
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