Post created by Elizabeth
A few weeks ago in our Anatomy and Physiology lab, we had the opportunity to test our blood types. This was very interesting to see what blood type everyone was and be able to see the range of which types were least common and which ones were more common. As we were discussing the rarity of each blood type and how prevalent each one is in the world, I remembered an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
In season 15 episode 20 of Grey’s Anatomy written by Shonda Rhimes, titled “The Whole Package” a young boy by the name of Gus came into the hospital. You see, Gus was an ordinary boy with autism who came into the emergency room with a cough. While they were examining, the doctors noticed he needed surgery on his chest but he was severely anemic. Therefore, in order to perform surgery, they had to do a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, he responded very poorly to the blood transfusion and his body rejected it because it was not the right type of blood.
In our blood, we have something called the “Rh antigen”, and Gus showed no sign of this antigen, this is called Rhnull. The Rh antigen detects whether your blood is positive or negative. The difference between positive or negative blood is defined by whether or not you have D antigens present. Not having Rh antigens present made Gus’s blood extremely rare and the doctors could only find four people with his exact blood type in the world.
The reason I wanted to bring up the story of Gus is because I thought it was interesting learning not only about the rarity of blood types, but how your body rejects certain antigens and the importance of each ABO or Rhesus antigen found in your bloodstream.
works cited: Grey's Anatomy, Netflix, 2005, Shonda Rhimes
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