April Fools Joke..not cool

Hello darlings, In the interest of full disclosure, I must state that I had pain this week. I actually had to call off of work on April 1st. The pains started as they normally did, twinges here and there, L1s, nothing major, and I ignored them, thinking it was a fluke and would just go…

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Stop Delays in Treatment of Sickle Cell Patients

This article is from the medical journal ED Nursing printed July 1st, 2007. I’m putting it on here so that more medical professionals can see that it’s not wrong to treat sickle cell patients properly. The most pertinent parts for me will be in bold. Hola at Dr. Tanabe for hitting the nail on the…

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The Sickle Cell Drug Addicts

I’m a nurse in a NYC public hospital and we have a cohort of patients w/SC who I see in the ED at least everyday or every other day. The hospital has a SC clinic but when it closes the patients come to the ED. They don’t have to wait and everyone knows them. So…

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What the Pain Feels Like

This is one of my absolute favorite PSA’s about sickle cell. Elise is totally kick ass, a warrior of the highest grade and I adore her accent. Her she talks about the pain that we sickle cell warriors go through. If you want to watch the whole series, click HERE or visit http://www.curesicklecelldisease.com/

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Crises #2: What Happened

Dates: May 9-17. After spending Thursday night fighting cold and flu symptoms, Friday morning had me dealing with pain…in a major way. None of the trifecta of painkillers, (Oxycodone, Vicodin and Dilaudid) could help me, even when I majorly dosed up on the trifecta. This means that the pain was so out of control that…

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Crises #2 of 2008: The Triggers

First of all, let’s focus on the triggers: The Trip to Hawaii: I was sick on this trip but not a major crises zone. More like “I’m warding off a major crises with rest and meds, please God don’t let me get majorly sick!” I did get better towards the end of the trip though.…

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Back Again

Well, the last week has been rough to say the least. I’m going to explore the triggers of my last crises as I usually do in my next post, but this one was really, really awful. The last time I was sick, I thought it was my worst time ever…but this time, this puts everything…

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Avascular Necrosis

I’m worried about my hips. I’ve been reading lately about avascular necrosis of the hip and the more I read about it, the more I think I have it. From what I understand, the sickling of cells causes the blocking off of tiny cappillaries, arterioles and venuoles (a sickle cell trait), which causes portions of…

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Admitting I’m Not a Super Woman

I was at work last night, another late 12 hour nocturnal shift. Everything was going okay until around 4am when I got hit by major pains. It’s unethical to be popping pain pills when I have the lives of other people in my hands so I just gritted my teeth and tried to bear it.…

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Going to the ER with Sickle Cell

For some reason, the medical profession, especially in the US has a limited view of sickle cell. First of all, they think that people with the trait can’t have pain—THAT IS A MYTH! Just because they don’t have the full out disease, doesn’t mean that pain doesn’t exist in the life of a carrier too.…

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