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Can someone do a word count on this stuff I'll post below...?

This article is about younger people who have sickle cell disease. Scientists and doctors have been researching ways to possibly treat sickle cell anemia and sickle cell-caused stroke, which happens to a majority of patients with SCA. With the treatments, there are risks. One way to treat SCA and reduce their chances of a stroke is by transfusing healthy blood to the patient every month. With these frequent transfusions, iron overload is a definite possibility. The patient is given medications to decrease the iron to prevent hemachromatosis. This new trial is called Stroke with Transfusion Changing to Hydroxyurea, or SwiTCH. This trial is the same as traditional means of treating SCA only instead of deferasirox, or Exjade; Hydroxyurea is the drug used. The researchers used this newer drug for half of the willing patients who wanted to try the drug, and the other half recieved their usual drugs. The two groups were then compared to see if Hydroxyurea was a better drug for lowering iron concentrations. This trial was halted due to a review that shown that there was no significant change in iron concentrations between the two groups. Also, the people in the group that was on the Hydroxyurea drug experienced more strokes than the group that were taking other iron chelating medication.
I thought the article was fairly informative and gave me an insight of exactly what physicians prescribe to people who are anemic due to sickle cell disease, and what the patients have to go through. Although I didn't see it mentioned, this treatment is more than likely for patients who are chronically anemic due to the disease and are also more prone to have a stroke due to the disease. One thing I found very interesting is what the article said about what Hydroxyurea actually does once in the body. The drug stimulates the development of fetal hemoglobin, which would take the stored iron and use it in the patient's circulation. This combined with the transfusion and the subsequent bloodletting(to avoid circulatory overload) is very practical and seems sound in theory.

Hm...I should write more...She said no more than 500 words, but really I don't feel right unless I DO write that much...And she wants the references in APA style. Does anyone have any idea what the heck that is?

Here we go. The electronic version of the packet that haunted by sophomore and junior year. This website should have everything you need:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Hmm... try this one:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/apa

Yeah, it takes a lot of practice to get used to. I hated it for the past two years, but it doesn't seem too bad anymore.

The only thing it is really used for is writing literature for scientific periodicals. And it is useful if you have a database of scientific articles, because if you have the citation, you can find the exact article.

Well, the design isn't really for websites. It's more for scientific periodicals and reports, which aren't always available online. I know it's made my project much easier when it comes to finding articles for my literature review. But I remember how annoying it was when I had to just blinding search on the internet for 'credible sources' and then cite them in that style. It was terrible.