Angela, SCD Caretaker
“I’m the mother of two daughters. I lost one daughter in 2018, she was my baby girl, at the age of 25. She has a sister who’s still a warrior right now. They did not have a Sickle Cell Anemia, they had the Hemoglobin Sickle Cell SC, both traits, which also caused them to have complications with the pains and all of that.
As a mother, it was very new to me when I had my first daughter. We didn’t know what was wrong with her. She was diagnosed at the age of, I think, two. Her sister was born two years later, and she was diagnosed at birth because at that point they started testing them at birth, and they went through the challenges of going into crisis.
It’s real weird because they were 10 years apart, but my oldest daughter suffered a lot as a little girl, in and out of hospital, and my baby girl, she began to suffer more once she became an adult. My oldest right now, who still deals with pain but she’s very manageable with it, she hadn’t been hospitalized since, probably, since she had her last child. So it was real different how I was able to study and learn and also deal with two girls with it, but it was so different how they experienced their crisis. One, I suffered with her as a little girl, and the other one as an adult.”
–Angela, Mother of SCD Warriors
