Renetta

I was a single parent. His father and I divorced when my son turned 1. I didn’t know anything much about sickle cell disease, so when they sent me a letter to state that my son had the sickle cell disease, they had another patient’s name on the letter, so I ignored it. I tossed the letter. I said, “Oh, that’d be somebody else.” Then she called me and told me I need to come in and that’s when she told me that my son had sickle cell disease before he turned a month old.

After, he started having the crisis at the 7th month. I want to say just from then on, like a year on, we were in the hospital like every month. The nurses were so patient and nice with him when he was in the hospital. While he was sleeping in the baby crib at that particular time, I would climb in the baby crib with my baby and lay down and go to sleep with my baby and they would peep in and see us in the bed together.