1 Last week I fell down and cut my knee. It bled and it hurt! I hurried home and washed it off. Then I put a band-aid on it. When I took off my band-aid today, I noticed something strange. My cut was gone. But instead of new skin, there was a hard, reddish-brown bump. What was wrong with my knee?
2 Thankfully, nothing was wrong. My knee was still healing. Instead of new skin, I had a scab. When I first fell, my body went into "fix-it" mode. The blood that came from my cut was full of platelets. The platelets and other blood cells stuck together and formed a clot. This clot helped to make my knee stop bleeding. When the clot dried, it formed a scab.
3 Scabs have a very important job. They help to protect a cut by keeping germs out of it. This gives the skin underneath the scab time to heal. In many ways, scabs are a lot like our body's watch dogs. Any germs that want to get inside a cut have to try and get past the scab's tough surface first. They may not bark, but they sure do make it tough for germs to get inside!
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