Dear Tei,
Visiting you in the hospital brought back memories of my being struck down with a painful sickle cell crisis during a short training course in Tehran in the mid-1970s. Tehran is supposed to be the fount of modern medicine, but because the doctor spoke no English and I did not speak Farsi, you can imagine the difficulty I had in communicating through an interpreter who did not know sickle cell.
In your case, you have been rather more fortunate. You were admitted in a hospital where all the nurses and doctors spoke English and where there was an established protocol for treating sickle cell patients, thanks to the campaigns by the Sickle Cell Society and the many sickle cell support forums across the UK.... Read more