She was only 21, a final year student studying Microbiology, when her eyes started turning yellow again.

They always did every now and then. She was used to it.

She had sickle cell. SS. And she had mastered the art of pretending not to be in pain.

Until that week.

It began with a fever. Nothing new. She’d taken paracetamol. Then antimalarial. Then ibuprofen. Nothing worked.

Her temperature danced between 39.2°C and 40.1°C like her body was preparing for a funeral she wasn’t invited to.

Then came the back pain. But not just any pain. This one clawed her spine, as if someone had wrapped razor wires around her vertebrae and was yanking them with vengeance.

She couldn’t walk.

Her urine had turned tea-brown.

And she was vomiting everything even water.

Still, she insisted it was just malaria. Maybe typhoid. It wasn’t until her younger sister found her passed out on the floor, her lips blue, her fingertips pale, her breathing slow, that the panic truly began.

At the hospital, it didn’t take long for the doctor’s face to change as he said to the other doctor on call.

"She is in full-blown sickle cell crisis, with acute chest syndrome, possible splenic sequestration, and she’s severely anemic."

Her PCV was 13%.

She was dying.

Oxygen mask on.

Cannula in both arms.

Four pints of O-negative blood were rushed in.

One of the nurses whispered that this was the third SS patient they were seeing that week, and the only one still breathing.

One hour later, she went into hypovolemic shock.

Her heart rate dropped to 41 bpm. She was shaking uncontrollably and her body was shutting down.

Her mother, strong-willed and prayerful collapsed on the corridor when she heard the words.

"We may need to intubate. Her oxygen saturation has dropped to 68%. She is no longer responding to commands."

For the next 14 hours, they fought.

Nurses rotated bags of ice around her burning skin to keep her from seizing.

She was placed on broad-spectrum IV antibiotics and strong opioids for pain management.

Morphine. Tramadol.

At 3:14 a.m., the monitor beeped continuously.

She was going.

The doctor shouted.

"Prepare for resuscitation!"

They pumped her chest. They shocked her.

Once.

Twice.

And she came back.

Barely.

Her recovery took 15 good days.

She lost 5kg.

Her voice now cracked like broken glass. Her hands trembled like leaves in harmattan.

But she lived.

And that was the miracle.

Not every sickle cell patient is lucky. Some don’t make it past childhood. Some collapse in school and never wake up.

Some die in their sleep. Some smile through their pain until the pain wins.

She lived.

But ask her again, and she’ll tell you.

"It’s not just a sickle cell. It’s a war I fight in silence every day."

She thought it was over. The transfusion worked. Her fever had gone down.

But by midnight, she started screaming, loud.

Uncontrollable.

The nurse said barely holding back tears as the doctors rushed in.

"Her bones… her bones are on fire."

It was an acute bone infarction, her femur was dying.

And the only surgeon available to handle this case was stuck in a flood and traffic, miles away...

@kylian Offor

#bruisedpen

.