Years ago (1995) when my son was a patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, docs there made a huge breakthrough in sickle cell anemia. That and others that followed have no doubt reduced the numbers of its victims. At the time, tho, it was too late for a little boy who’d been in my son’s unit. Very sad.
My son has a friend with 3 of 4 kids with sickle cell. It has been a very hard road for them.
When I was an undergrad, I worked at the desk of a ward that had 2 sickle cell patients getting new treatments. They would just scream in pain and their lights for the nurse would constantly blink. The nurses told me not to pay attention because the patients had a schedule for their pain killers and they couldn’t give them any more. How awful.