THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF SICKLE CELL DISEASE
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Accept Your Disease. Don’t ignore it. Respect it, don’t fear it. Learn how to master it and not let it master you.
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Take Good Care of Yourself. There is only One You! Practice healthy eating habits, drink plenty of low sugar/salt fluids, get adequate sunlight exposure and rest; get some aerobic exercise. Take care of your MIND, BODY and SOUL.
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Pace Yourself. If you overdo it, you will experience pain. Once you master your tolerance levels you will do much better.
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Remember You CAN do EVERYTHING You Want To Do. ALWAYS be safe and not sorry.
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Learn to Control Your Pain. Don’t let your pain control you.
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Develop And Focus On Some Things That Bring You Joy and Satisfaction. Set goals and strive to achieve them.
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Establish Independence Socially, Emotionally, Economically and Medically. Take charge of your disease. You own your sickle cell, your family and doctors can help you but it is not their disease, it’s yours. OWN IT!
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Establish An Effective Social Support Network within and outside of your family. Seek supportive relationships with people who accept you as you are and all that comes with you.
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Don’t Waste Your Pain Medication. Don’t reach for the medicine cabinet. Treatments other than pills can reduce pain. Learn how to tailor the use of pain medication to the degree of pain you have. Over-treatment leads to increased pain and reduced effectiveness of the medication and may also reduce your quality of life.
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Pain is a PAIN But That Does Not Necessarily Mean Something Terrible is Happening. All pain is not related to sickle cell disease and could have other causes.
NOTE/DISCLAIMER:
I DARE NOT TAKE CREDIT FOR WHAT I DID NOT CREATE. THIS WAS SHARED WITH ME AND A BUNCH OF OTHER PARTICIPANTS IN A GROUP FORUMN ON TRANSITIONING ADOLESCENTS TO ADULT CARE. IT WAS GIVEN TO ME AND A GROUP BY MY NIECE’S PEDIATRICIAN, DR. IFEYINWA OSUNKWO A.K.A. DR. IFFEY 😉
OUT OF CHILDREN’S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA.
Amazing, indeed!
Hate to be the killjoy, but some of these are helpful (if they remain in the realm of the theoretical) and others are easier said than done for some of us, e.g.,:
– Remember You CAN do EVERYTHING You Want To Do: Not always (and for me, not most of the time)
– Establish Independence Socially, Emotionally, Economically and Medically: A little hard to do so when you’re pretty much alone, out of work because of your disease, suffer from clinical depression, broke because you’re out of work, and get substandard medical care because that’s what’s available and you can’t keep up with the medical bills anyway
– Establish An Effective Social Support Network: See above
I understand positive thinking, but it would also be helpful to take into consideration the less positive realities that dominate a lot of lives. Unless this site is only for positive thinkers or folks with a milder condition. (No, I offer no solutions because I’m seeking them myself.)
Thank you for such great information on sickle cell diseases may God bless you for helping humanity.
What my father use to over this disease was water and fruits i mean plenty of it. My father use to take more than ten liters of water every day especially in the night and he lived more than seventy years and it was not even the disease that killed him.