I am a curious creature; I like to understand the ins and outs of certain things. Hence, today’s post is all about bruises and how bruises heal. As an ITP patient often bruises can appear out of nowhere, sometimes they can appear out of clumsiness (if you are anything like me) however the majority of the time you wake up and you’re like wow, that’s new. This leads me to research bruises and as per usual I like to share what I learn.
Your body is always under construction, it grows, it tears, it breaks and during that process generally the body works on repairing itself. Bruises usually appear when you bump yourself. Often the soft tissue is damaged and when it is damaged the small veins and capillaries (tiny blood vessels) under the skin break. Those small veins and capillaries can also break when their walls expand and contact too quickly or for other reasons not related to impact causing them to tear and allowing blood to pool out. When this happens, your blood leaks red blood cells. These red blood cells cause the skin to turn red, purple, black or blue.
Your platelets generally come to the rescue as soon as they are aware of the damage, they clump together and begin the clotting process. As the blood clots, this is when the bruising usually turns black and blue.
The phases of a bruise include;
A bump that is red or purple and might be swollen from the blood collecting under the tissue
A bruise will then turn blue or black, this usually happens within a couple of days
Then the bruise will turn yellow or green in approx. 5-10 days
After 10 – 14 days the bruise will start turning a brown share and get lighter and lighter until it eventually disappears.
Your body will eventually clean up the damage. The platelets will clot the blood and your white blood cells are part of the clean-up crew that will absorb the spilled blood. This is when the bruise will fade.
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