My body can fix itself
My body has its own way of fixing itself. It heals itself. When I hurt
myself, my cells begin to do special jobs.
Suppose I cut my hand on a piece of glass. The cut place bleeds. Almost
at once the blood coming from the cut begins to clot. The cells stick
together. Slowly the blood gets thick and covers the cut. Then the blood
gets hard. It makes kind of a cap, called a scab, over the cut.
Under the scab, other cells are working.
Germs may have got into the cut. White cells in my blood eat up the
germs.
One day I cut my hand.
Blood came out of the cut.
The cut wasn’t deep. It didn’t hurt much. I washed my hands with soap
and water and then dried them on a clean towel.
Mother put a small bandage over the cut. The bandage helped keep dirt
out of the cut while it was healing.
The cells along the edges of the cut grow and divide, grow and divide.
New cells take the place of some of those that were hurt by the glass.
Still other cells do another kind of job. These are special healing
cells. They make a kind of net that joins the edges of the cut together.
Each day this net gets thicker, tougher, stronger. It is called a scar.
After a while the scab falls off my hand. Then I can see the scar.
My hand has healed itself.
