WACO, Texas (KXXV) — "When they found out I had it, they told my mom I wouldn’t live past the age of five,” said 43-year-old sickle cell patient, Simenthia Evans.
Evans was diagnosed with sickle cell at nine months old.
Sickle cell disease is mostly seen in minorities, with more than 90 percent of patients being Black or African American.
"It causes the red blood cells to become very stiff and sickle-shaped and it shortens their life spans," Baylor Scott & White Hematologist James Mason.
"It ends up having the potential to clog blood vessels and it can cause a great deal of inflammation."
Dr. Mason says the disease can cause an unbearable amount of pain.
"If you don’t know about the pain, it feels like you’re being stabbed — it’s excruciating pain, it’s not a pain that I would even wish on my worst enemy," Evans said.
For Evans, she says it’s affected her day-to-day life for as long as she can remember.
"Walking through H-E-B and Target — walking too long on that concrete floor, it hurts my hips and back, so then after a while I’m hurting, so I’m having to go home," she said.
It's a condition she wishes people knew more about.
"They think of you like you have AIDS or an STD, but I’m born with this — this is hereditary — this is a genetic thing that I got from my parents," Evans said.
There is no cure for the disease, but treatment includes blood transfusions, medication and therapy.
September was Sickle Cell Awareness Month, but Evans believes it’s something that should be talked about all the time.
"It should be something talked about year-round — learn to know about sickle cell, that way you can help us in a time of need," she said.
There are currently more than 100,000 people in the United States with sickle cell — all across the country members of the Sickle Cell Association of America host events to help raise awareness of the disease.
Find more information on the organization here.
