Changes in your blood
A booklet for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and their families
Book One
Text & Illustrations by Simone Thomason
Cover artwork by Navada Currie
You can read this booklet below, or download it here.
Changes In Your Blood, A Booklet for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and their families, is book one in a series of five educational booklets. The booklets are primarily visual teaching tools, designed to meet the comprehension needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, diagnosed with a blood cancer, and their families. This resource may also benefit all patients, including cultural and linguistically diverse people groups whose main language is not English.
Disclaimer: This booklet is not intended to provide or be a replacement for medical advice. Text and illustrations © Simone Thomason, 2020. Cover artwork © Navada Currie, 2022. ISBN:978-0-6486980-0-5
Acknowledgements: The author would like to express sincere thanks to patients and families, co-workers, colleagues, friends and family whom have supported and provided encouragement throughout the compilation of these booklets. In particular those whom took time out of their busy schedules to review, critique and provide feedback on the booklets at various stages of their development, including: Dr Ferenc Szabo; Dr Akash Kalro; Dr Tina Noutsos; Hayley Williams; Barbara Smith; Robyn Jones; Barbara Cox; Cheryl Hooper; Mary Copp; Jean Murphy; Helen Kennon; Mally McLellan; Joyce Crombie; Tania Wakefield; Myrtle Weldon; Lesley Versteegh; and my husband, Martin Thomason.
The Leukaemia Foundation uses real-life stories to provide education, inspiration and hope. If you have an experience of blood cancer you’d like to share, please email [email protected]
5
Have you felt lumps in your neck, under your arms or inside the top of your legs?
Have you been sleeping lots?
Are you getting short of wind when you are walking around?
Are you bruising or bleeding anywhere?
Don’t feel shame, go to the health clinic for a check-up.
6
Tell them if you have:
– Felt lumps in your body
– Are sleeping a lot
– Getting short of wind
– Have bruises or are bleeding anywhere.
They will do a blood test.
Your blood tells the story about how well you are.
7
Your blood is made of many tiny shapes called ‘cells’.
These cells are so small you cannot easily see them.
When doctors test your blood they use a special machine to see these blood cells.
8
Your blood has three types of blood cells. They have different jobs to do to keep you strong and well.
Platelets: Stop the bleeding if you cut yourself.
Red cells: Carry the wind you breathe into your lungs and around your body to make it work and move.
White cells: Fight against germs and stop you getting sick from infections.
9
Doctors count how many different types of blood cells you have.
They look at the shape of your blood cells, to see if they look weak or strong.
When cells are weak, they may have holes in them or their shape may have changed.
When cells change like this, they don’t work right and this can make you sick.
10
Blood tests can show how well your liver and kidneys are working.
The liver’s job is to break down medicine and foods for your body to use.
The kidneys clean your blood and get rid of the rubbish in the urine (pee).
11
There are many cells everywhere in your body.
They all have different jobs to do.
Cells all fit together in your body to make your body strong like bricks fit together in a house.
12
When cells in your body or blood get weak, you get sick.
Just like when the bricks in a house get weak, the house can get sick and fall down.
13
When your blood tests show changes, you will be asked to leave country and go into the city hospital. There you will have more tests to learn why these changes are happening for you.
It can take a while to get all the tests done, so you may need to be in the city hospital for days or weeks.
You can take a family member with you.
In hospital you will meet special blood doctors and nurses.
14
The hospital staff can help you and your family with any questions or worries you have.
There are many staff who can sit and chat with you too:
(Indigenous Liaison Officers)
(Pray, sing or just talk with you)
15
(Interpreters)
(Explain things to you and help you talk with the doctors and staff about the tests and what’s happening each day)
(Support you and also help you with money questions and/or Centrelink.)
16
When you are in hospital you will need to have a lot of blood tests.
A special tube, called a PICC line, will be put into your arm, so you can have blood tests without needles.
The mob in X-ray will put this in for you.
You can also be given medicines and bags of special water into the PICC line.
17
You will have X-ray tests which show pictures of the organs inside your body.
These X-rays are called a:
– CT scan or a
– PET scan
These tests don’t take long and do not hurt you.
18
The X-rays can show if you have special lumps of concern inside your body.
The doctors may need to test a small piece of a lump, to see what is inside it.
Before the test, you will be given a needle to make the lump go numb so you won’t feel the test.
19
Inside your bones, are many tiny holes called the ‘bone marrow’.
Inside your bone marrow is where your body’s young blood cells are made and grow.
When these cells are older, they move from your bones into your blood and go to work.
20
To help the doctors learn more about your young blood cells, you will need to have a bone marrow test.
This test is done from your hip bone.
You will be given medicine to put you to sleep for this test. You will feel a small needle sting in your hip at the start, then it will go numb.
The test takes only a few minutes, then you sleep for a while.
21
Some blood cells can move into your spine and make you unwell.
To know if this has happened to you, you can be asked to do a spine fluid test.
The fluid inside your spine looks like yellow water.
At the start of the test you will feel a small needle sting in your back.
This test usually takes 5-10 minutes. Then you lie in bed flat for a few hours, to stop any headaches.
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Last updated on May 23rd, 2023
Developed by the Leukaemia Foundation in consultation with people living with a blood cancer, Leukaemia Foundation support staff, haematology nursing staff and/or Australian clinical haematologists. This content is provided for information purposes only and we urge you to always seek advice from a registered health care professional for diagnosis, treatment and answers to your medical questions, including the suitability of a particular therapy, service, product or treatment in your circumstances. The Leukaemia Foundation shall not bear any liability for any person relying on the materials contained on this website.