Blood Work

Here is a plot of a few of Kristi's vital blood characteristics. The "hematocrit" is the percentage of her blood volume occupied by red blood cells. "WBC" stands for "white blood cells", which are counted by the thousands per micro-liter. Platelets are essential for clotting, without them you could bleed to death from a paper cut, they are counted by the thousand per micro-liter. Hemoglobin is the oxygen carying molecule in red blood cells. It is measured in grams per deci-liter. These four make up the standard CBC or "Complete Blood Count". Day 1 (April 3) is an interesting data point. She started out with exceptionally high WBC, and exceptionally low hematocrit. Four pints of blood brought her up to a safe level, but the low end of normal for women is around 36%. The goal now is just to keep her hematocrit above 21%. This plot shows the effect of chemo on white blood cells and platelets (as a side effect). The WBC curve will continue to asymptotically approach 0 over the next week and a half.

Below is a slide from Kristi's bone marrow biopsy that the pathologist used to diagnose her variety of Leukemia. The purple cells are myelocytes, all of which are malformed and immature except one (the small dark purple one). At the time of the biopsy, her bone marrow was 94% Myeloblast, with little or no representation from 17 other cell lines. The large cell that looks like an orange section is a myeloblast caught in the processes of dividing. The chromosomes are clearly visible.