Now apart from all these trials I passed through, there were also very many positive situations so don’t think that majority of my life was beset by lows. However for ease of your reading, it’s better to first chronicle the battles and much later share the victories that occurred and this I will be doing very shortly.

In my post today, I will be sharing some of the medications that have helped me cope over the years with sickle cell disease. Probably at a point, I would share with you a post from a consultant physician regarding using some of the medications.

In a previous post, I noted that malaria had the ability to trigger crises in sicklers, anyhow to overcome this problem, apart from anti-malaria medicine, my mum always ensured that from time to time, my bedroom was sprayed with insecticide which I frequently do now as I’m much older. Nowadays one can also adopt the use of mosquito treated nets especially in tropical semi-arid areas like Nigeria where mosquitoes are very prevalent.

In addition to anti-malaria medications such as Paludrine, Folic acid is an absolute must for any sickler as it helps make new red blood cells. This is because the red blood cell count in sicklers is lower as the sickled cell usually die after 10 -20 days unlike normal red blood cells in non-sufferers that last up to 120 days.

As I became older I got to understand that the only cure for Sickle cell anemia was by a bone marrow transplant but sometimes due to lack of suitable bone marrow donors, the best way of managing the condition is by use of adequate medication. Not too long in the future, I came across another SCD (Sickle cell disease) patient that informed me about a medication called Hydroxyurea. This medication in addition to all other preventive measures I have mentioned both in the past and above is one of the effective ways that one can easily manage SCD.
Hydroxyurea is safe, aids in reducing the frequency of crises and mortality rates in SCD sufferers by 40%.

To explain in detail some of the points I have noted above, I will refer you to a link titled “Pharmacological Management of Sickle Cell Disease”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730092/

At this juncture, I know some of you may want to know how come I’m able to live all by myself despite this condition. Well, first and foremost, I owe it all to God but I would also like to share some experiences I had in the past which I found to be unpleasant at the time but actually paid off.

During my teenage years, the area where we lived was always gated at night. My crises also had the tendency to come frequently in the late hours of the night /early hours of the morning when the gatekeepers must have locked the gates and taken off. It was so very prevalent then. As a result of this, whenever the crises would start at night, I would be denied access to proper medical care not because my folks did not want to rush me to hospital but because they could not find any of the gate keepers to open up the gates. All through the night, I would weep in pain from the crises I was experiencing. My mum and dad would administer the mild medications and whatever first aid they knew best and would plead with me to please bear until 5am when the gate keepers would be around to open up the gate. It was a very horrible situation for the duration for which it went on.
Somewhere along the line, the issue with the gatekeepers was resolved and I was always rushed to a nearby hospital but this did not happen until after several untold experiences at night.

Anyhow, when I ventured out to live all by myself, some of the things I considered were if there was provision for shelter, transportation, and proximity to the hospital. Little did I know that God would cause some of my past experiences to work out in my favor. How? Well on different occasions when I would have a crises at night because I had learnt to bear pain at a tender age, he would give me the strength to drive at odd hours to the hospital. It was always very difficult to get a taxi at such hours way back then because one needed to stand on the road and wave down a taxi which of course is impossible when going through a crises. It’s only recently that taxi service apps like Uber, Taxify and the like have come on board and opened up our society making everywhere easily accessible.

I’m not implying that my experience should be be exerted on other SCD patients but it only goes to show that sometimes shielding a loved one may not always be the best solution. If my folks had denied me the opportunity to live all by myself, I may not have understood /known what my limitations and strength were, so at the end of the day it turned out to be a win-win situation because wherever they are tomorrow, they understand that I can take care of myself and I in turn understand that God is capable of seeing me through whatever comes my way.