Living with sickle cell for over 20 years means learning to live around your body, not in it. For John, that meant choosing hobbies that wouldn't require too much movement. Reading. Staying indoors. Playing games.
Sounds like the ideal life to most, until it's your only option. Most days came with pain. Frequent illness. And the quiet weight of knowing that the people around you are having to teeter around your pain too.
For John and his mum, sickle cell could not become something they simply got used to.
So when the opportunity came — a bone marrow transplant through the Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria — they grabbed on to it quickly. SCFN helped with the hospital, the visa, accommodation — everything needed to make the surgery possible.
Five months later, everything has changed. John is stronger now. Wakes up and goes for walks. He works out. Lives more freely.
“I actually feel good,” he says.
For the first time, his body isn’t dictating his life.
There are over 150,000 children born with sickle cell every year in Nigeria.
Their stories don’t have to end in survival.