Over the past 3 weeks I have had to see loads of Sickle cell anaemia children (probably cos of my recent change of departments) either coming for their routine clinic follow up or coming in one form of crises or the other.For those coming for normal clinic follow ups, you see in their parents' eyes that they are feed up of the regular and constant hospital visits.
For those that came in crises, as the child cries out in deep and excruciating pain, you see the parents (usually the mothers) also crying either because they are feed up or because they couldn't bear their child in such agony.
Quite often I am like, you are a SSCE holder, perhaps OND or HND, or even Bachelors Degree holder, some Masters or PHD holders, how on earth were you ignorant of you Genotype or your spouses' genotype before you got married or you just decided to bring a child to this world to come and live a painful life full of agony for both the child and the parents.
I usually feel like telling the parents to their faces that "You are the cause of all these, you could have prevented this trouble if only you had taken the appropriate decision"
Here is my honest advice, its not worth it, you say love covers everything, but after giving birth to a sickle cell disease child, the love will be severely tried & threatened, your marriage will be tried & threatened, the siblings of this child will have a traumatic experience of seeing their bro/sis going through such agony. Its also drains the parents financially, emotionally, spiritually and any other wise.
Please know your genotype, if you are AA, feel free to marry anyone with any type of genotype. If you are AS, you only have one gentoype to marry so as to prevent this which is the AA genotype. And if you are SS, you should only marry AA genotype so your children won't go through what you went through.
Everyone living with HBSS need so much love, affection and care. Do not stigmatize them..
Continue to live Healthy.
Written By: Dr. Safiriyu Isreal
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