As you know, living with Sickle Cell means frequent visits to the Emergency Room. As an adult, I've been fortunate. From age twenty to present, I've only had to go to the ER a handful of times. As a child and teen, however, it was a very different story.
Often, my day would be normal; I went to school, played with friends, did my chores, and went to bed feeling fine. Then around midnight, I would awake in horrid pain that couldn't be controlled with home medication. Many, many times, my parents had to drive me to the ER at one o'clock in the morning. I think it was harder on my parents than it was on me; never knowing when their child would be fighting for his life in a hospital bed.
One particular trip to the ER I remember very vividly. I was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old. In the bed next to me there was person who had been shot. Despite the doctors best efforts, he didn't survive his wounds. A thin curtain between two beds doesn't provide much privacy. At the time, it was the closest I had been to a person who had died.
By that time in my life, I personally had come close to death several of times. But, for the first time, that experience made me realize how quickly life can be taken from a person. I had long been aware of my own mortality. But the death of the man next to me in the ER made my mortality more real.
¶ I've had nearly one hundred sixteen hospitalizations in my life. Approximately a dozen of them have been in my adulthood. Logically, when I became an adult, I no longer stayed in the pediatric ward when admitted.
I remember one of the first times I was admitted to the adult unit. An aged senior gentleman was my roommate. If I recall correctly, his illness had caused him to be mentally out of it; he was conscious, but not there. I remember one day his family came to visit him and talk with the doctors. The doctor pulled the "privacy" curtain closed so he could tell the family their father had a cancer. There was nothing that could be done for him, and the doctor expected him to live only a few months. Naturally, the family sobbed.
Experiences like those I've shared have an impact on a young mind and they stay with you. Though leaving this life had always been on the forefront of my mind, those events brought death into clearer focus and far more real.
I think my purpose in sharing them is to provide a glimpse into what we as Sickle Cell patients see and hear in the hospital. Experiences like these, and countless others, caused me to be an introspective person. It caused me to develop a unique view about life, death, and everything in between. Your loved one may have experienced similar events that had a profound impact on them.
In the post, "Family Openness," I talked about how important it is for patients to feel free and able to talk with their family openly about anything and everything. They say, "still waters run deep." Sickle Cell causes patients to frequently be still; consequently our waters tend to run very deep. I ask that parents, siblings, family, and friends be aware of that. There may be a need to talk about issues and experiences that plague your loved one's thoughts. Be there for them, and willing to listen.
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