Glossary

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4100 - The short stay unit (less than 24hrs) at Children's St. Paul.
4200 - The long stay unit (more than 24hrs) at Children's St. Paul.
4a - The pediatric nurse station for the BMT unit at UofM.
ANC - Absolute Neutrophil Count - The absolute number of neutrophils, a class of white blood cells that does most of the dirty work in fighting infections.   Normally in the range of 1,000-3,000.
BMT - Bone Marrow Transplant
(A) Difficult prognosis - medical term for "the game is almost over and we can't do much about it."
GVH or Graph vs. Host Disease - In BMT, as the donor blood system awakes in the foreign body, it attacks the host.  As Anders is a perfect match, it is hoped this will be kept to a minimum.  It is also hoped it will be suffered, as one of the casualties is believed to be any remaining parts of the original immune system, some of them being leukemic cells.  Too much or none is bad; somewhere in the middle is best (not to be confused with good).
Hemoglobin - a class of blood cells that carry oxygen to the body - normally in the range of 11.5-15.5 grams per deciliter.  Below 8.0 a patient can get sleepy, get headaches and lack the energy to fight off infections.
Nurse practitioner - does some of the tasks the doctor does: bone marrow biopsies, spinal taps, treatment coordination and general poking around on the patient.
Oncologist - A medical doctor who treats cancer.
PICU - Pediatric Intensive Care Unit
Platelets - a class of blood cells that cause clotting - normally in the range of 150-450 thousand per cubic millimeter.  Less than 20,000 and small injuries, especially to the head, can be a threat.
Salvage Rate - the percentage of relapsed patients that survive (not making this one up).
TBI - Total Body Irradiation - a patients entire body is irradiated with hard X-rays.  Used in BMT to help ensure all white blood cells, healthy and leukemic, are destroyed.  Unfortunately the rest of the body takes something of a beating.
TPN - Total Parenteral Nutrition - food through an IV tube.
WBC - White Blood Count - normally in the range of 3,400-9,500 per cubic millimeter.   When you are below 500, infections can be a real problem.  When you are at 0.0 (actually less than 50) infections are life threatening.

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