The following excerpt is taken from Appendix B of Childhood Cancer: A Parent's Guide to Solid Tumor Cancers, 2nd Edition by Honna Janes-Hodder & Nancy Keene. To order a book, call 1-800-998-9938. Permission is granted to print and distribute this excerpt for noncommercial use as long as the above source is included. The information in this article is meant to educate and should not be used as an alternative for professional medical care.

• Values for Healthy Children
• Values for Children on Chemotherapy
• What Do These Blood Values Mean?
• Your Child's Pattern

Keeping track of their child's blood counts becomes a way of life for parents of children with cancer. Unfortunately, misunderstandings about the implications of certain changes in blood values can cause unnecessary worry and fear. To help prevent these concerns, and to better enable parents to help spot trends in the blood values of their child, this article explains the blood counts of healthy children, the blood counts of children being treated for cancer, and what each blood value means.