Sickle Cell, a cereal analogy
I’m working on a story about a little girl who beat sickle cell disease through a bone marrow transplant. It made me realize I really don’t know much about the disease. The little girl in the story was on oral morphine to curb the pain. Unfortunately, she needed to take other medications to curb the side effects from the morphine. It made me wonder why doctors would give such a powerful narcotic with obvious side effects to a child. This is what I found out.
Sickle cell disease is basically abnormally formed hemoglobin production. Instead of red blood cells being squishy and donut-shaped, they are shaped, to me anyway, like corn flakes, all jagged and different.
Imagine pouring kix cereal down a large straw just wider than the spheres of cereal. They would roll down the straw in a fairly ordered way. Now if you pour cornflakes down the straw, or better yet corn flakes in a fluid that maintains their rigidity, they would clump up and block the straw.
The problem, and pain, lies in the other end of the straw-capillary model. If there is a blockage, which there often is, the cells on the other end die. Dying cells hurt. If there are a lot of blockages the pain increases. For the girl in the story, she had many blockages in her abdomen which caused her to yell out in pain. You know that smiley face pain chart in the doctor’s office? This girl could say she was a 10. In comparison, I could only say I experienced pain close to that when I had kidney stones. They were gone in a day or two. I wasn’t in pain my whole life.
Anyway, this story is one of the most profound stories I have ever been able to tell. This 8-year-old girl is a hero. I’m writing it now and will hopefully be able to post it soon.
What a breath taking story! Congulagulations to you Carol. Thank you for sharing, this will give hope to a lot of people.
Suzan, Dallas