Story: Help Coming at the Right Time for Kid suffering from Sickle cell anemia

I had always been a carefree person but some experiences in life teach us so much that we cannot ignore the pragmatism of it. Life is never happy go lucky. I used to believe that. Now I don’t. I was happily married with a gem of a husband alongside 3 angelic kids- 2 boys and a girl.

Unluckily, it so happened that my eldest son suddenly developed severe pains in the chest, back, arms, legs, and abdomen one day at school. There all kinds of tests were run and finally the doctors diagnosed him with sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia is a genetic abnormality carried on through the generations where the red blood cells aren’t able to carry enough oxygen. All the symptoms pointed towards it. The doctors enlightened us towards the treatment which apparently was very painful. It included all kinds of opioid pain medications (for example, morphine), anti-inflammatory medications (for example, ibuprofen) and other fluids plus antibiotics. But the only permanent treatment involved getting a donor match of the stem cells. Stem cells have a common property. They have the ability to make other types of cells. No other cell in the body can do that. Some stem cells can renew themselves and become virtually any cell in the body. These cells are then bone marrow transplanted from the donor to the acceptor person. The harder part is getting it from a healthy person. That healthy person is usually a sibling but a group registry match is preferred.

Again, unluckily, the donor registry did not provide any feasible match. Me and my husband were highly perturbed. We just had one last resort. Get one of his siblings to get tested for a match. I was so worried that night. My younger son was only 5 years old and his sister was only 3. It was the only night that I had been terribly worried. I didn’t want to put my other son and daughter through a painful procedure.

The following day we got our other son and daughter tested. My daughter turned out to be a perfect match. She is the bravest of the girls I know. She immediately, despite being three years old, said and that too adamantly, that she wanted to help her brother.

This is where the problems turned an unknowing path. The day the bone marrow transplant was to take place; my little girl caught a cough. The donor person should be absolutely healthy for the transplant. The doctors seemed positive that they’ll be able to treat the cough in a couple of days and then they would be able to get on with the transplant. What’s worse is that her condition started worsening. She couldn’t even talk now. It was a bit like asthma. I had never been so much troubled before. My family was breaking up in front of me and I couldn’t do anything.

At this moment, God sent a young doctor who insisted that he needed to check our house. I went with him. He carefully took all samples. In our backyard, we have a water tap but the water that comes out of it is pretty bad. The doctor took sample of that too and a photo of the tap. He them visited my little girl in the hospital and asked whether she had drunk any water from that outlet recently. She nodded. The doctor then came to me and explained that our house was built on a chicken coop which, although destroyed, still had some spores in the soil which travelled through the water and caused the histoplasmosis that my little girl had contracted. He gave a couple of meds and said that she will be alright till tomorrow.

I had never been more thankful. The bone marrow transplant took place the following week. It was successful. Both my elder son and my youngest daughter are healthy now. I could never stop thanking the doctor who discovered the environmental cause that nearly killed half of my family.

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