Fun-a-day 5: "Poik"

Today I stitched up my version of poikilocytosis (such a fun word), or abnormal shapes of red blood cell (RBC).  In normal blood, the red cells are all pretty much the same size and shape. In the middle is a normal RBC.  Various medical conditions can cause the red blood cells to become abnormally shaped.  When a medical technologist looks at the blood smear, he or she will rate the amount of "poik", and list all of the abnormal shapes he or she sees, sometimes rating the amount too.  Certain abnormalities can indicate a medical condition.  I'll list the most common medical conditions in parentheses, but once again, I'm not a doctor, so keep that in mind.  Also, some have multiple causes.  There are also "medical" terms for these, and "common" terms, which I interchange.

At the top, working around clockwise, the little cell at "12" is a sperocyte (auto-immune hemolytic anemia), sickle cell (sickle cell anemia), target cell (seen in many anemias, including liver failure), acanthocyte (severe liver disease), stomatocyte (hereditary stomatocytosis), elliptocyte (also common in many types of anemias, including iron deficiency), schistocytes (red blood cell fragments, may be seen in "DIC", or disseminated intravascular coagulation), teardrop cell (severe iron deficiency), and lastly, a nucleated red blood cell (these are immature red blood cells that are normally found in the bone marrow, but in severe anemia when the body is trying hard to produce more RBC's FAST, they can sometimes be seen in the blood).

Phew!  I hope I spelled all of these correctly!  I think it took me longer to write the blog than to sew them!!

One thing I'm learning about "thread painting", is that I really need one of those "open toe" feet on my sewing machine so I can clearly see what I'm doing!  Also trying to fill in an area with dense thread sewing is hard!  My machine doesn't like it either!  Hmmm maybe that's why they make embroidery machines.  But I'm SO not going there!  And it's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with "Freshly Pieced" blog for WIL Wednesday, since this is indeed a WIP!!  Head over there to see what others are working on!

Oh, and here's a few pictures I've taken the last few mornings on my daily walk with my dog.  We've had a long cold snap, that's produced some amazingly beautiful creations...