The Sickle Cell Warrior

By Ugochukwu Ogbonna

Life picks us wildly; she has a way of dipping her hands and randomly selecting what transpires. The beautiful thing is that she has no favorites, doling out goodwill, pain, and all forms of human emotions in equivalent unbiased measure.

I lie stiff, as usual, when this seething pain trods in my bone marrow. My fist clenched to ease the non-ending agonizing maelstrom in my body. This agonizing episode; one never gets used to.

Two months ago, Olu proposed to me; I turned it down.
This is not a love story. It is my life, ‘our’ struggle.... 'our' fate.

I met Olu two years ago. He knew I was sickle-celled on our first date. My strange eye discoloration, my frail frame, and the Hydrocarbamide and Ibuprofen tablets that slipped off my purse gave me easily away. Conscious of the fact that he had found out my ailment, I excused any hint of trying to be who I was not. If he wanted me, he would have to take the whole package.



I turned Olu’s proposal down, not because I did not love him; in fact, my relationship with him had been the longest but because I wanted to save him from the impending pain that he was bound to undergo if we eventually got married. I kept his ring though.

When I was fifteen, I hated my parents for trying to gamble nature. I am the consequence of love’s foolish choice. Since my marriage to this ailment, compromise has been an inexcusable art I had to master. I had given up my career, my love for high-heeled shoes, and fancy dinner dresses.

As every month ends, I shiver in fear; my monthly period is almost always heralded by intense pain, my body has been conditioned for the worst episode of my cycle; every month worse than the previous, hence, my intake of folic acids and water had become my most treasured snack during these periods. My thirty-one years had made me call myself a warrior, a sickle cell warrior. We know what pain entails, we understand the mystery of endurance, and we live each day with a waning hope. I am always in subservience to this tyrannous bully.

I turned down Olu’s proposal because I had surgery, Stem Cell transplant; the only potential cure for my ailment. Over the years, my parents had devoted all their earnings to this cause; donations and grants had been given. This is, and would be, another gamble. Tochi, my brother would be my donor; we had a matching bone marrow type.

This is maybe my last date with Olu. I had intended to break all the rules. I slip into my skimpy short dress, strapped into my shimmering high-heeled sandals, applied makeup, let down my hair, literally, and slipped his ring into my finger.

Hours later, we sit together in his car, his eyes brimming with tears. Our hands clasped together.
A streak of light slicing the darkness we sat in. The heavens pouring rain.

I am not promising him, and myself, that I would come back. I just want to enjoy the gift of the now. Of course, if I do, I would not only be his wife, I would be able to get my life back, and this time life would have to compromise to my desires.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The End.
Yes, I lie stiff, the doctors working on me. Like a guinea pig in the hands of an experiment. Well, technically. I do not feel any pain this time. Deep in my subconscious life goes on. I feel Olu’s kiss on my lips. I remember how it felt, deep with streaks of tears, his tears, intruding the minty taste of his lips. My emotions are frozen; I had spent a great deal of my life crying. It was his turn to cry for us both. Somewhere in that meeting of our lips, I read and deciphered it held two worlds; that of a goodbye and that of hope, and that is what frightens me.

Hope is lethal;
it bruises us repeatedly and when we arrive at the point of nothingness, we till and cultivate it again.