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5 Tips for a Successful School Year

Alright warriors it's about that time for school to start back up! For the ones going to college for the first time or just returning here’s 5 tips on how to have a successful school year.

1. Are you registered with your school’s disability office for the 504 plan? If not get on that now! For first time freshmen you’ll need to get paperwork from your doctor in order to register. If you’re returning all you should have to do is email or call the disability office. Each school is different on the procedures, so find out now what you have to do each semester if you already don’t. It’s extremely important to have your 504 plan, it saved me many times when I was out sick. This gives all of your professors some type of paperwork letting them know you have some form of a disability and what your accommodations are. The paperwork doesn’t tell them exactly what your disability is, but I highly recommend you tell them you have sickle cell. But please make sure you’re registered with them!

2. Do your assignments way in advance if possible. If you get sick around time a big assignment is due, it’ll help take the stress away about trying to complete it while ill or having to make it up later. You should get a syllabus at the beginning of the semester. Highlight all important due/test dates! If you don’t have a paper due until October, don’t put it off until the last minute. If you can start ASAP then go ahead. You’ll thank yourself later when you aren’t feeling good or in the hospital and assignments start to pile up.

3. Communicate with your professors! Whenever you’re going to miss class because of health related things email them. In the er at 3:00 a.m. and have a class at 8:00 a.m. email them as soon as you can to let them know what’s going on. If you’re behind in work and don’t understand it go to their office hours. The more they know you the more they will be willing to help you out.

4. Tell your dorm director and roommate as soon as you move in that you have sickle cell. If you aren’t allowed to have mini refrigerators in your room a doctor’s note to your director will allow you to do so. If you have certain protocol you like to follow whenever you have a crisis inform your roommate so they can help if willing to.

5. Have fun! Don’t be afraid to be a college student! Study hard and party if you like to. Don’t be afraid to live your life because of sickle cell. Just be smart when you do go out. If you do plan to drink (for my 21+ warriors lol) hydrate all day and don’t go over your limit.

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5 Do's & Don't's for People with Relationships with a Sickle Cell Warrior

It’s extremely hard to have romantic relationships and friendships while battling a chronic illness. People tend to not understand us fully no matter how hard they try. If you have a friend or significant other that has sickle cell or any other disease here’s 5 do’s and don’t’s to keep that relationship strong.

1. When you’re trying to make plans with your friend that has SC make sure whatever the plan is that you keep their health in mind. DON’T suggest to go to a water park when you know that swimming and back to back water activities could send them into a crisis. For me personally I can handle water activities without always going into a crisis, but i can’t handle doing them all the time. For example, if I go swimming one day then I should wait at least a week or so until I do another water activity. All SC patients are different so it’s your job as a friend to know the basic limitations your SC friend might have. Some SC people can’t even go swimming at all because they’ll immediately have a crisis. DO keep your SC friend in mind when making plans like that.

2. DO visit your friend when they are sick in the hospital whenever you can. While in the hospital SC patients need support from our friends and family, especially when we’re in there for a long time. DON’T just send a text if you’re a real friend. This illness is so unpredictable and things can go south quickly. SC patients never know if that hospital admission will be our last or not, therefore having our love ones visit is super important. And it would be on your concise forever knowing you could’ve seen them instead of just sending a text.

3. DO let them rest without criticizing them for always being tired. SC patients get extremely fatigue and need to rest often. DON’T say to them “you’re always tired”, “just take a nap and you’ll feel better”, or “yeah I’m tired too so I understand how you feel”. SC patients could get 8 hours a sleep every night and still be extremely fatigued. You on the other hand are probably just tired because you didn’t get enough sleep and that can easily be fixed by sleeping. SC patients tiredness comes from the lack of oxygen getting to vital organs and that can’t be fixed with extra sleep.

4. DO understand when we have to cancel plans last minute because we don’t feel good. DON’T get mad or stop inviting us to stuff because we do cancel at the last minute. SC patients can feel fine one moment and then BAM! the next minute we feel awful. It really does happen that quickly and we can’t help it.

5. DO be our advocate when we go to the er. If you end up going to the ER with your SC friend pay attention to everything that’s going on. Even if it’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re super sleepy, try to watch the doctors and nurses whenever they come into the room to make sure they aren’t mistreating your friend. When we go to the ER is hard for us to pay attention because of the pain and the medicine makes us sleepy. DON’T let the medical staff run all over your friend. In the ER most of the doctors and nurses aren’t trained to treat SC patients. They probably know the basics from that 1 paragraph out of of their medical school books they had years ago.

No matter if you’re a friend or a significant other to a person who has sickle cell these things will help you maintain a healthy strong relationship with them. Us sickle cell warriors just want genuine people in our lives, because things are tough enough as it is. It all boils down to that golden rule we learned when we were kids. Treat us how you would want to be treated if you were living with a chronic illness.

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College & Sickle Cell

I’m very happy to say by the end of 2017 I’ll be a college grad. This journey has been honestly a struggle for me. Since 2012 I’ve been in Virginia attending school and I’m from Mississippi. You may say “oh that’s not a big deal, people go off far for school all the time”, but how many people with a chronic illness go 16 hours away from home to further their education? I don’t have any exact numbers or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s not very many. I completely left my family and friends who were my wonderful support system for 18 years and came to a place where I didn’t know a single person. Over my 5 years here in Virgina I’ve had people who’ve been in and out of my life when it comes to my illness, but I never really had a solid support system my entire tenure here. That alone has made my journey much harder. Before I came to VA I was rarely ever in the hospital. In high school I was in there at times, but never as frequent or as long as I have now. Being sick was basically totally new to me, so it wouldn’t have even been fair of me to expect to have a group of people who would be there to help me during ER visits at 2 a.m. or week long hospital stays majority of the times. Heck, I wasn’t even familiar or use to it. Academically things have been harder for me as well. Missing classes because my legs were in too much pain to travel across campus, and being up all nights of the hour in the ER did not make things easy for me. College is not a cake walk as is, but adding a disease to it puts the hardness level on steroids. I’ve taken many “Incompletes” and even failed some courses because of being sick so much. This post isn’t to been seen as me being on my soapbox about how hard my life has been, it’s actually to inspire other sickle cell warriors and people in general that you can do anything you put your mind to. I’m literally at the finish line for my first degree because I did not let sickle cell stop me. Yes it may have delayed me a little, but I’m determined. Always believe in yourself! Even when the world is against you! God has had my back through this all and I could never thank Him enough. I also thank everyone who has ever taken me to the hospital, stayed with me, brought my homework or food, help me walk when I could barely stand, kept a smile on my face through the pain, and everything else under the sun! I truly appreciate each and everyone of y'all! Thank you, thank you, & thank you.❤️

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What is Sickle Cell Disease?

Alright folks this new entry will help people understand what sickle cell is. Basically it is a hereditary blood disorder that causes the red blood cells to be an abnormal shape. The red blood cells (RBC) are suppose to be a circular shape like a donut, but people with sickle cell our RBC are shaped like bananas. Now RBC job is to carry oxygen to different parts of the body, but since sickle cells aren’t shaped right it’s difficult to do so. The cells get clumped together and it causes extreme pain in that area of the body, that is called a pain crisis. Pain crisis can happen at anytime. For me personally many of mine occur at night/early in the morning when I’m sleep. A pain crisis is no joke! Ladies imagine the worst period you ever had, now multiply that pain by 100! And fellas imagine being hit in your genitals and multiply that by 100! I’m currently in the hospital from having a severe crisis the other night. I woke up around 4:00 a.m. in a horrible crisis. My arms felt like they were being broken. Then my chest felt like someone was beating on it with a bat. And my knees felt like they were being cracked open like a walnut! Right now my pain is being controlled with iv pain meds, but it’s not controlled enough yet for me to go home. Sickle cells also have a shorten life expectancy than normal RBC; normal life span is like 120 days and sickle cells is about 30 days. Sickle cell causes extreme fatigue as well. Many people like to say oh just get some rest you’ll be fine, but that’s not how it works. My body is constantly working over time to function properly which causes me to be fatigue a lot. Pain isn’t the only complication caused by sickle cell. Many sickle cell warriors have had their spleen removed, hip replacements in their 20s, strokes and so much more. This is a very serious disease and it’s hard for people to grasp that since it’s an “invisible illness”, meaning that we look fine on the outside but we aren’t fine on the inside. If this post has inspired you to do some more research about it clink on the following links! Awareness is the key to a cure for sickle cell. So go look up more and share your new knowledge with others! :) https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sca”>https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sca</a><br><a href=“http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sickle-cell-anemia/home/ovc-20303267”>http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sickle-cell-anemia/home/ovc-20303267</a><br><a href=“http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=474”>http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=474

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Welcome!

Hey yall! I decided to start a blog about my life living with a chronic illness, sickle cell anemia. I'm not a pro blogger, so do not expect some wonderful masterpiece lol.

My main goal for this blog is to help bring more awareness to sickle cell disease and other chronic illnesses. I also just want to help others through telling my struggles and success stories. Like J. Cole said, "there's beauty in the struggle". If yall have any questions that want to be addressed in a post, especially about sickle cell let me know!

Oh yeah! I almost forgot to explain the name of my blog! If you haven't figured it out already, but since I do have a chronic illness and I'm sharing stories of my life I thought it was perfect! Thanks for joining me so far and enjoy all my informational, motivational, and hopefully fun posts! <3