Carol's AML Pages
For the Inquiring Mind
Blast Off?
What do those
nasty blasts look like anyway? And if I ever find a decent
explanation of how you get from a stem cell through all the hoops to
either a healthy neutrophil (our heroes!) or to a leukemia cell I'll
add it here.
Don't bother looking at all of these sites --
they're targeted at oncologists or educators in medical schools, but
you can still find your favorite and use it to play Blast Off!
INSTRUCTIONS
FOR BLAST OFF!
1) Find a picture of a
particularly
nasty blast from the choices below:
2) Print out image. Write
BLAST OFF! in big red letters across top.
3) Draw 3 sets of circles around
a particularly juicy-looking blast, with the bad guy in the center (I
think you know where this is going by now!) and label the inner ring
100, the middle ring 50, and the outer ring 25.
4) Tape it up on your wall and
throw darts or spit balls at it. Hmmm, maybe use your spoon and
lob blobs of hospital mashed potatoes instead. They'd stick
really well and not give the nurses heart failure about you poking
yourself with a pointy object.
Posted 3/9/2004
Complete Blood Counts and Differentials
Everytime we go to the doctor we get a CBC and a
differential, but did you ever wonder how
exactly they counted something so tiny? Inquiring Mind went
surfing for the latest. First, read up a bit on exactly what a
CBC and a differential tell you at Understanding
Your Complete Blood Count, a patient education brochure
from the National Institutes of Health.
Blood cells are suspended in saline (salt walter)
and fed into an analyzer. Because salt water can conduct
electricity, and the blood cells cannot, the cells are counted as they
pass in front of a pair of electrodes -- no current? then a cell
is present.
For more details on how this works, check out:
For more on common blood tests, see:
Draft posted 3/10/04