#Study: Sickle Cell And Its Peculiarities (II)


Posted on: Sat 11-07-2020

Last week, we were privileged to read about how a young lady with sickle cell is living with the disease and her faith in God.  One thing I know for sure is that people with sickle  cell are courageous and strong emotionally.  Perhaps, this is because of the intense pain they live with on a daily basis and another reason among others would be the fact that they are in and out of hospital during the course of their lives.

Here is the concluding part of AF’s story. 2015, things changed rapidly for me and my faith grew gradually. I was tired of running around from God and I just wanted to live for Him.  A dear friend I met through social media made me see my life in a different light and I wanted to live for God before dying.  I felt I might die soon because my health was really terrible. I couldn’t do anything on my own without assistance and I developed a leg ulcer which made the pain worse.

I started speaking the word to my health and in a little while, I realised I could walk around the house without much pain.  Gradually and up to date, I haven’t had any excruciating bone pain. The tumors on my body started melting away from 2015 and life began to make sense. I had a reason to live.

2016, my stomach started giving me issues. I had difficulty eating and drinking anything. I felt this shouldn’t come up after being free from pain a whole year and I was offended at God. I suffered from low self-esteem, bitterness, hatred and started nursing suicidal thoughts again. I still couldn’t walk well. But the fact that I didn’t suffer any pain, I tried going out of the house. The stares I got from people were embarrassing and now the big belly and abdominal discomfort got to me.

2017 and I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain in my stomach was beyond words.  I insisted on doing another genotype test done.  I wanted to be sure why the pain had stopped and had left completely, but my genotype results still read the sickle cell disease (Hbss).  I didn’t let that bother me much. I believed the abdominal discomfort would gradually ease off, but I wasn’t sure.  My faith kept holding on to the word. I felt most of my internal organs were ruptured or maybe badly damaged.

I held on to one truth, I will still be useful for God to my world and though everything gave me reasons to doubt, I no longer saw death as an option.

During my constant hospital visits, (I had to go over for several consultations because of my stomach), the doctor who attended to me on my first visit gave me his number. I was careful not to be a burden to him. But soon enough,  I realised he was a God sent to my life in that season and for a long time to come.

I have had friends who awoke me to the reality of God’s love, but not many of them followed up to be sure I was in line with what they had been explaining to me.  I couldn’t go to church because of my health, and my home and environment wasn’t really the faith filled one.  Everyone seems to go to church in order to be in God’s good book and my siblings who are more enlightened in faith, were based far away from home due to their jobs.

I got introduced to my doctor’s wife and she happens to be a professional therapist, a spirit filled counsellor.  I never knew my past hurt was affecting me and making it difficult to accept on God’s love. But through them and their ministry, ‘Pens For Christ,’ my life took a new turn.

Some months ago, I saw a picture my mum took for reference and I realised how greatly God has healed me physically.  In the picture, the whole of my back was filled with different growths here and there.  And my hips and knees, my elbows weren’t spared either.  But looking into the mirror, I could only find two tumor growths. One by my elbow and the other on my lower back around my spine.

Interestingly, some weeks ago, I realised I could lean comfortably on the wall without obstruction from my back.  I checked it out and discovered the tumor/growth on my lower back had melted away into a tiny peanut size. I was more than excited.

For a year now, I have been breathing well. I still trust God that my stomach would come back to its flat state.  I still remember one of the foreign doctors’ appointments where I was told that the bone ossification had so much affected my chest and it was making it difficult for my diaphragm to expand and function properly with my lungs. Hence the difficulty in breathing. There was nothing they could do about it, but now, I’m breathing fine.

Over the months, eating and drinking water has greatly improved.  My life feels brand new and sometimes I just sit, stare and cry at the wonder of God in my life.

Though my hands are stiff and my knees are locked in, I always look beyond the pain and hope to bring encouragement to others.  I believe we can live above this pain and our experience would become a testimony of God’s goodness.  In this I found my passion in writing and use my social media timeline as my tool to reach out to others one soul at a time.

By God’s grace, I have written two e-books and I am presently working on a novel (based on my true life story) to be published in hard copy soon.

There’s always more to life than the limitations we experience.

Source: Punch