This month's speaker is Roger Chapman who will present a pictorial view of what our blood looks like. He trained as a Medical Laboratory Scientist in Pathology at Christchurch Hospital specialising in Haematology. On qualification he worked in Melbourne for 5 years before returning to the private pathology sector in Christchurch working at Medlab South. Later in his career he changed his focus from lab testing to managing lab IT systems. In semi retirement he has provided IT Management services in the Intellectual Disability sector as well as being an Operations Manager for the CDHB during the Covid-19 response. He has been a member at U3A Pegasus with a committee role of IT advisor until the formation of U3A Ōpāwaho.
Roger gave us a look from under the microscope to show us 'what our blood looks like'. Drawing from his long history of working in Pathology and with the aid of images taken with an electron microscope and images from stained blood films using regular microscopy, we were able to see what red cells, white cells and platelets actually look like.
He outlined how microscopic blood cells are by referring to our blood count normal ranges, which showed red cells numbering between 3.5 - 5.5 million per cubic mm, white cells between 5,000 - 10,000 per cubic mm and platelets between 150,000 - 300,000 per cubic mm.
At a microscopic level we examined normal blood cells then viewed examples of abnormalities in both red cells and white cells, such as the blood pictures for anaemia and leukaemia.
