Just like the bone marrow goes into overdrive making reticulocytes when there's blood loss or anemia, it also goes into overdrive during a bacterial infection, making lots more neutrophils, the white blood cell type primarily responsible for fighting bacterial infections. They are also kicked out a bit young as the body is trying to recover, and we see this in the nucleus (dark purple). The nucleus is "band" shaped, and indeed we call these bands in our white cell differential, or "diff". We look at 100 white cells (under the microscope) in the "diff", and type or sort them, giving the doctor a percentage of each. If there is a high overall white cell count, and a marked "left shift", the doctor knows that the patient has a severe bacterial infection. This can be seen in pneumonia, blood poisoning, or appendicitis. This can be really helpful especially when the patient comes through the ER or has symptoms that can be various things. Of course I had to put some RBC's and platelets in there too!
But the thing I'm most excited about today is that I got my Etsy store up and running! It was a bit of a learning curve, but I think I got it. I hope to add to it and make it "better" as I go along. I made a few of these ebook cases for family and friends over the holidays, and got such a good response that I'm trying to sell some, as well as iPad covers. Wish me luck! Here's the store link:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/SolarThreads?ref=pr_shop Since we have 12 solar panels on the top of our house, I decided to call it "Solar Threads". I'd love any feedback, good or bad if you got a minute!! Thanks!
