My 1st Sickle Cell Crisis & How It Changed Our Lives Forever

The day I had my first Sickle Cell Crisis

I remember my first crisis as if it was yesterday. I was sitting in my fifth-grade English class learning about sentence structures when out of the blue. A sharp pain began to attack my legs, like a psychopathic murderer stabbing his victim with no intention of stopping. I slowly raised my hand and asked my teacher, Mr. Henderson, if could please go to the nurse’s office. He kindly allowed me to leave.

I crawled slowly out of the classroom to begin my trek down the seemingly endless corridor. Upon entering the library, the pain brought me to my knees, and I collapsed. At that moment, I realized that I was alone, without anyone to help me. I immediately started to panic. I thought to myself, “How am I going to make it to the nurse’s office?” I was in so much pain I couldn’t even stand properly. I saw a desk that was placed in the hallway and grabbed it for support. I then steadied myself to complete my journey through the hall to the nurse’s office.

Nurse’s Office

Weak, in agony, and stumbling my way down the long corridor, through the school library— to the Nurse’s office — I truly thought I was going to die. At that moment, I felt desperate and so alone. But, to my surprise, I made it. Upon my arrival at the administrative office, I collapsed on the floor and cried out, “Please help me! There is something wrong with me!” I was terrified, my screams were petrifying to my Nurse. My principal, Mrs. Thumb, ran into the room from her office.

“What is going on?” Is she having her first period? ”

– Mrs. Thumb

Once my mother got to my school, within the hour, but, what seemed like, hours to me, I was swiftly, placed in a wheelchair, and wheeled to the car. My mom, had little time to even converse with my Principal, because she knew, what was happening to me was sickle cell disease related. Frantically, we rushed from PG County, Maryland to Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. Where, I have been a sickle cell patient since the age of two years old.

The 45-minute ride to the hospital was a ride like I had never experienced before. It was positively hellish because the condition of the roads was terrible. Driving over a bump or pothole caused my pain to escalate in indescribable ways. Whenever the car drove over a bump, it felt like a knife was twisting into an exposed wound. Screeching at the top of my lungs, a thrashing in pain, fear engulfed my deteriorating,10-year old-body.

Since no one had any idea what was going on, myself included. My mother was alerted to my condition. Scared, confused, and in pain. I cannot stress enough, the enormity of the amount of pain, I was in — I continued screaming, waiting to be picked up.

What was only an hour felt like more than ten hours? The pain was torturous. I was in so much pain that I could not form words to correctly articulate, what I was going through, and what & how I was feeling? I wondered if my Mom would ever make it to my school and save me from misery. My first sickle cell crisis was completely out of the blue, blindsiding me, placing me at the mercy of God, and at the mercy of my doctors.

The older I got, the more I began to learn that my sickle cell disease was going to continue to blindside me. A pain crisis would come out of the blue. Crisis after crisis, my blood would flex her muscles, striking me at the most inconvenient of times. Due to the unpredictability of sickle cell disease, I had to learn how to respond to my disability with grace, in the face of adversity. I had to quickly adapt to thrive. If you, for any reason, feel like you’re limited by your disability or shortcoming, just know that you’re stronger than you think. I do not doubt in my mind that you will persevere in life.

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Forty-five minutes after an agonizing ride, I was wheeled to the hospital’s Sickle Cell Clinic. I was immediately checked in and taken to an examination room. As soon as the Nurse Practitioner (NP) came in, my mother asked, “what is wrong with my daughter?”

Children’s National Hospital

She is Sickling

The NP calmly said, “She is Sickling.”

“Sickling?” My mother said,

“Yes, Madam, she is experiencing her first pain crisis. We are going to order her some pain medicine and try to get her pain under control.”

I continued rocking in the fetal position. Screaming more loudly whenever a nurse or doctor passed by because I was too young to comprehend the amount of pain, I was in, it was so much pain. When in moments of unbearable pain, you often feel unseen. Mentally managing sickle cell pain is incredibly difficult, especially as a child. The pain we suffer is detrimental to our mental stability. Due to this fact, SCD Warriors should always have access to Mental Health Services.

A Sickle Cell Patients Reality

What felt like an arduous, negligent waiting period of about two hours was realistically only a 30-minutes. Side note: When you are in excruciating pain, the kind of pain that a Sickle Cell Warrior endures, every second counts. When I was younger, I thought screaming louder would garner a faster response from my medical team.

As I matured into adulthood, I began to recognize, the importance of preserving my energy during a crisis is a necessary must. I have learned that staying calm in adverse moments lessens the stress already placed on a weakened body.

The Pain through the Eyes of a Child

I was then hooked up to an IV drip to receive fluids. When the nurse came into the room, she pushed the morphine into my IV. What I was hoping for, at that moment, was that the medication would take away my pain, as the medical team had promised.

However, that day was the start of a long lesson that I had to master in my childhood. It took me years to fully comprehend this. Pain medication would never be my savior in the fight against Sickle Cell Pain. Meds might ease my anguish to a certain extent, but they won’t completely fix any crisis.

In those precious moments of my first crisis, I was entering a long journey with a complex relationship between pain, doctors, hospital administration, and opiates. My first morphine drip for Sickle Cell would not be my last, and the fight to maintain some semblance of normalcy would depend on a journey with pain medication.

I welcome you to my blog Chronic • ly Sickle, where I’ll share my experience with Sickle Cell Disease. I’ll tell personal stories from my life—some heartbreaking, some funny, some in your face, but all unfiltered. I’ll try to teach you about Sickle Cell Disease beyond what medical textbooks can cover.

I hope, we’ll grow together, and I’ll challenge you to become an advocate, to understand the issues associated with this chronic illness, called sickle cell disease.

Together, I believe we can change the world, for Sickle Cell Warriors.