Her Sickled Journey

The love I have for travelling is like no other. Travelling is something that I am fortunate enough to do frequently and it brings me so much joy. I love immersing myself in different cultures and experiencing different ways of living. However as someone living with sickle cell, travelling can be a completely different experience, for me it’s definitely a more stressful one. I’m writing this on a plane, Nigeria bound to spend the Christmas holiday with my family, and while preparing for this trip I was reminded about the worst crisis that I’ve ever experienced in this my 21 years of living. This crisis was on a plane and I was extremely underprepared for it, so to prevent this unpreparedness for anyone else I’ve listed a few things below that, as an individual with sickle cell, have to be considered while travelling: beforehand, during and while you’re abroad. (btw I’ll talk about my worst crisis in another post). First Things First   Pack for Every Situation - Tito a...

You know them ones when you haven’t been ill for a while and you forget what it feels like? Well that was me and as I was approaching my 7th month without a crisis the cold weather handed me a rude reminder of what it’s like to be in pain. I woke up on the 1st of November with a sharp pain in my left leg. Describing a sickle cell crisis is something that I’ve always found difficult but I’ve watched YouTube videos where fellow sickle cell warriors would describe the the pain as “worst than giving birth/a constant “hammering”, “stabbing”, “throbbing” feeling/worst than getting shot”… I personally cannot describe the pain in those ways because I’ve never actually had those experiences before. But I can say that the pain is terrible. It’s disabling. Simple tasks that I could have easily done without a second thought, I can no longer do. I remember that day a simple 10 second walk to the bathroom took me a good 5 minutes.   When I fell ill I was in complete shock, and I kinda f...

Soooo yesterday marked 5 months since my last sickle cell crisis!!! *milly rocks* Meaning 5 months without hospital admissions, 5 months without the need of life saving blood transfusions, 5 months without using pain killers. 5 months may seem like a very short period of time but for someone who is used to falling ill at least once a month and frequent hospital admissions this is a serious milestone, and a day doesn't go by without my prayers being filled with thanks. There are many things I could have been doing much earlier in my life to improve my health. However, it has only been until recently that I started to make real conscious steps in ensuring that I am in the best possible health. I truly believed that using my medicine was the only way I could ensure this. I have learnt that this is not the case at all and there are actually so many things that can be done in addition to improve my general health and prevent a crisis. I’m sure my fellow sickle cell warriors woul...