A sickler narrates his sickle cell anaemia experience.

 “Doctors got frustrated while attending to me, Nurses got mad at me, Friends came and went, as many of them were repelled by my sickly nature.” --- Mr. Daberechi Ibekwe-Dickson,

I longed to be normal, but unfortunately I was diagnosed a sickler when I was young. Now at twenty, I understand that good health is something that I might never obtain without God. With him there is hope, and one day I believe my genotype will definitely change. Since birth, life with sickle cell disease has been hard: My quest for normal life didn’t make life any easier: I was ashamed of who I was, and it was not till recent moments in my life, that I have come to accept it. Years ago while I was undergoing care for a crisis, I was sitting there in the hospital, I began to think about my life as complex compared to those of my age. It is not what society would refer to as “normal.” I often find myself wondering. Out of of approximately 7,300 days I have lived on this earth “I have been hospitalized over 1000 times without exaggeration and with excruciating pain. The pain can only be relieved, not cured. Sickle cell has remained incurable. With conventional medicine, it can only be prevented or managed

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