Medical editing (and a neutrophil update: 130!)

A few of you might occasionally notice some changes after the fact to posts. This happened when I first wrote about the concept of neutrophil count. At the time, Bonnie's count was 20 and I carefully detailed that a "normal" count is 48,000. ("Wow!" I thought to myself, "Bonnie's got a long way to go!" as I typed the number.)

My wife (and medical editor) looked at that post and said "Where the heck did you get that number?" "From you," I answered. Turns out she had said "four to eight thousand," which sounds a lot like "forty-eight thousand" when you've got seven and nine year-old daughters rocking out to Avril Lavigne in the backseat of a car.

Anyway, Bonnie's neutrophil count today is 130, which is a nice jump up from the previous 20, and it's well on its way to the 500 count required to get her off antibiotics, and to eventually send her home.

If you'd like a (carefully edited) explanation of neutrophils and how you can watch this count to see when Bonnie will head home to Burlingame, click here.

PS. My Mom, in her first job out of college, sent 12 "dozen" men to a construction work site. Turns out they needed 12 (bull)dozer men. 144 men on site, and not one of them could operate a bulldozer. True story.