One would think that slicing half the nail off my thumb while attempting to chop an onion would result in a geyser of blood spraying and splattering everything in its path and making the kitchen look like a murder scene.
When this tragedy happened, I grabbed the offending thumb and emitted a scream so loud I think my neighbors felt a shift in the force. My husband and kids raced over, dialing 911 as they flew to my rescue to see what body part lay on the floor after such a blood curdling squeal of anguish.
So I showed them my thumb… and as eight eyes looked intently at the severed nail…one tiny drop of blood…slowly and lazily idled its way out. I squeezed it, and shook it and waited for the deluge of arterial, gushing mayhem I just knew was coming. And the one tiny drop sat there…friendless, while my husband rolled his eyes and suggested I get a Bandaid…a small one.
Well, if you’ve read my post on my hating to drink water, you probably know that my body likely did not have any liquid to spare, but still, I was quite miffed that it couldn’t have backed up my melodrama a little bit better. At the same time though, I was glad I wasn’t carrying the mutated gene of many unfortunate members of the early European royal families that rendered their blood unable to clot after even the tiniest cut.
The inbredness (is that a word?) of the European royal family resulted in a mutated gene that seemed to have originated with Queen Victoria, being spread throughout England, Spain, Russia and Germany. (See folks there is a reason you shouldn’t marry your cousins – being purebred only works for roses).
This mutated gene resulted in one tiny part of the 21 stage cascade of events that causes your blood to clot, to not work properly.
This one tiny change in the DNA caused one tiny protein not to have the right instructions to fold properly, which means it could not interact properly with other proteins and this caused the 21 stage process to come to a grinding halt. For people with hemophilia that means a tiny cut or bruise is potentially fatal…and it was to several princes including Victoria’s own son Leopold, and helped to contribute to the fall of the Russian dynasty when Prince Alexis had it.
It is mind boggling to me that it is believed that our beautifully functioning bodies could have evolved to its state of amazing harmony through random mutations, when we see over and over that one tiny change in DNA is enough to annihilate a system that is critical to our survival. I, on the contrary, believe this is extraordinary proof of a creator and a beautiful design.
Here’s a great animated videofrom Johns Hopkins University. It is awesome in that it is complex and the words make no sense unless you have a PhD in Biochemistry. But just watching the visual of what happens when blood clots is worth a thousand words!!!!
When I cut my nail off my thumb, the blood vessels near the cut immediately contracted to limit the flow of blood to the injured area. Under normal circumstances, clots do not happen inside the body. All the necessary parts flow in your blood in an inactive form, yet ready spring into action at a second’s notice.
When you get cut, a bazillion types of proteins, and calcium and vitamin K and factor this and factor that begin this complicated dance where hands are held and partners are handed off to new partners and the music in the background becomes increasingly animated and the tempo picks up and the flurry of activity becomes a beautiful waltz…
The result of which is that instead of me bleeding to death and having multiple flashing lights of ambulances at my door as I am carried off amid a flurry of tears and prayers…is that I have a lazy drop of blood and disinterested family and a disgustingly efficient clot that healed up beautifully in a few days.
I don’t even have a stupid scar to show for it… but boy am I amazed at the complexity of the music God has made in my body that keeps me alive and praising Him every day.
Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
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