Sickle Cell Anemia

Your red blood cells — the cells that transport oxygen throughout your entire body — have lost their shape. Instead of being round and supple, they are rigid and crooked, like compressed half-moons. They become lodged in the finest blood vessels, blocking the flow, triggering pain crises that feel as though your body is burning from within. Organs become undersupplied. Fatigue becomes a permanent condition. Your blood — the medium that carries life into every cell — can no longer fulfil its task freely.

Medically, sickle cell anemia is a genetically determined disease. A mutation in the hemoglobin gene alters the structure of the red blood cells. That is fact. That is biology. And it must come first: this illness is not the consequence of wrong thinking or wrong feeling. It is congenital.