3.1.

2 Sickle Cell Diaries

4 year-old male being treated with antibiotics and folic acid supplements:
I am a four year-old boy diagnosed with sickle cell disease. I have experienced many
symptoms that my hematologist, a trained physician who studies, diagnoses, treats, and prevents
diseases related to the blood, explained to me such as shortness of breath, dizziness, coldness in
hands, chest pains, and, headache. I cannot play many sports because I have been diagnosed with
sickle cell disease. I cannot play many sports because I experience shortness of breath. My hands
will get cold and almost numb sometimes, and this is caused by sickle cell disease. There is no
known cure for this disease, but there are treatments to fight against the disease. One of the
medications I take is Folic Acid Supplements. I help fight against the disease, but it has many
risk factors so my mom is always careful when giving me this medicine.
15 year-old male who will have a bone marrow transplant:
I am a fifteen year-old teenager diagnosed with sickle cell disease. Throughout my life I have
experienced many symptoms of sickle cell disease. One example of this is chest pain. I am about
to receive a bone marrow transplant in just few days. There is a possibility that by doing this I
can be cured of sickle cell. There were two main requirements I had to have in order to receive a
bone marrow transplant. The first one is to identify the person who is the best match or donor.
The second requirement is after the donor is chosen; both the donor and the patient will have pretransplant evaluations of the heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. While having these test done on me I
talked to a phlebotomist who is a person trained to draw blood from a patient for clinical or
medical testing, transfusions, donations, or research, told me that it was rare to actually find the
right donor for a bone marrow transplant.