Joan Cartan-Hansen, Host: Blood is your defender against certain diseases.

But sometimes, problems arise.

That's when a whole team of medical professionals who specialize in blood diseases gets to work.

[MUSIC] (door slides open) Dr. Ian Qureshi: Hi Sidney.

Sydney: Hi.

Dr. Qureshi: My name's Dr. Qureshi, it's very nice to meet you.

Sydney: It's nice to meet you too.

Dr. Qureshi: Yeah, so, your family doctor had asked me to see you.

I'm a hematologist-oncologist, so I focus on blood.

They told me that your blood levels have been low.

How have you been feeling lately?

Sydney: Um, I've had.

(fades) Dr. Ian Qureshi: Hematology is a study of blood and blood-related conditions, health conditions.

Oncology is, uh, cancer and, uh, there's overlap because some blood, uh, cancers are treated, uh, in oncology as well.

Cartan-Hansen: To figure out what's wrong, Dr. Qureshi starts out with a lot of questions.

Dr. Qureshi: When did you first start noticing these kinds of symptoms and has it been getting worse?

Patient: It's been a couple months and it's definitely been getting worse.

Dr. Qureshi: Okay.

Sydney: I thought I was just wasn't sleeping enough so I.

[fades] Dr. Qureshi: Then, as I'm seeing them I go through their medical history, including any other problems that they may have had.

And then I'll find out anything else that may be important to them, you know, for, for example, how they're feeling, if they're feeling tired, if they're feeling, any pain anywhere.

Then we check the blood.

Cartan-Hansen: A doctor, nurse or a phlebotomist, someone specifically trained to collect blood, will insert a small needle into a vein.

The blood flows into an airtight container and is sent to a lab.

Sally Kurdy is the lead hematology technician at Saint Alphonsus Hospital.

SALLY KURDY: In this area of the lab, we perform a CBC, which is a complete blood count, and we also utilize an instrument that will give us the counts of these cells.

It'll count all the red blood cells, all the white blood cells, all of the platelets, and give the provider a comprehensive picture of what types of cells are in the blood, if they're good cells or if they're not so good cells.

Cartan-Hansen: Blood is made up of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma.

A blood disorder affects one or more of the parts of blood and stops them from doing their job right.

That could be too many blood cells or too few.

It could be misshapen cells or blood that won't clot.

Medical technicians are vital to finding out if anything is wrong.

SALLY KURDY: If there's anything abnormal, then we make a peripheral smear.

The blood is then smeared along a glass slide and that separates the blood into what we call a monolayer.

So, we can actually look at the different types of white blood cells that are in the blood.

Cartan-Hansen: Your blood test results are your body's report card on your health.

Doctors use the results to diagnose all sorts of illnesses.

Dr. Qureshi: It's important because all the cellular functions and, and the human body, uh, needs these cells in the proper amounts, uh, in order to function well.

So when one type of cell is, uh, say, out of the range, usually that's means that there's a, a problem somewhere in the factory of the blood cells, which is the bone marrow.

Cartan-Hansen: And what advice does Dr. Qureshi give to keep you and your blood healthy?

Dr. Qureshi: I recommend that patients, uh, have a varied diet that includes lots of fruits and vegetables and all of the material that you may need to produce blood cells, which includes vitamins and nutrients, as well as iron.

Cartan-Hansen: Both he and Kurdy say considering a job studying blood is a really good option.

Kurdy: When I was in grade school, our next door neighbor was a medical technologist.

And she was telling me about what she did.

So I went to college and I got a degree, a bachelor's degree in biology.

And then, um, I was wondering "what am I gonna do with a biology degree?"

So, I thought I need to look into using my experience and my education in the laboratory field.

So, I applied to medical technology school.

Um, it was a year-long program, and it taught me everything I needed to know about a clinical laboratory, the type of laboratory that are in hospitals.

Well, I think the most important thing that, that I enjoy about my job is I think that we are like the foundation of providing physicians with the information that they need to diagnose and treat their patients.

Dr. Qureshi: You know, hematology-oncology is a great field for anybody considering anything involving science because there's a lot of research being done on it all the time.

And it's somewhere where you can make a difference in somebody's life.

Cartan-Hansen: If you want to learn more about blood, check out the Science Trek website.

You'll find it at sciencetrek.org.

(MUSIC) ANNOUNCER: Presentation of Science Trek on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho; By the Idaho National Laboratory, mentoring talent and finding solutions for energy and security challenges; By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.