Speaker 1: There are times where you feel like, oh God, you
Speaker 1: want to die, just if we put out your misery
Speaker 1: because the pain is so bad. We were encountering this
Speaker 1: for the first time when we were working up Miss
Speaker 1: Antoinette's case. She doesn't want people to know or see
Speaker 1: her in that vulnerable state. The patients might be wellnest minute,
Speaker 1: but the next minute they are an organizing pain which,
Speaker 1: if not treated in a timely fashion, could escalate nading hospitalization.
Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, at least for me,
Speaker 1: every day when you wake up, you know, you like,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, I'm not in pain. How terrifying would it
Speaker 1: be to fight an unknown enemy, one you didn't recognize
Speaker 1: and didn't see coming. What if that enemy was coming
Speaker 1: from within a disease even doctors couldn't identify. Nearly half
Speaker 1: of all Americans suffer from some chronic illness, and many
Speaker 1: struggle for an accurate diagnosis. These are their stories. I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Bright, the checko, and this is symptomatic. Antoinette Elcock
Speaker 1: would be the first person to tell you it takes
Speaker 1: a bit of time to get her to put her
Speaker 1: guard down and open up to people. That is, unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about Soca music or West Indian food. Some
Speaker 1: of the joke sauces can be extremely saucy, so sometimes
Speaker 1: it depends on the brand, like the ones that come
Speaker 1: directly from the Caribbean like less A Jamaic or whatever
Speaker 1: the case may be. There used to spice. I need
Speaker 1: a arrested be for jerk chicken because I've tried to
Speaker 1: make it four times and the first time I made
Speaker 1: it way too spicy. I'll get you an email and I'll,
Speaker 1: you know, think it played by play, like how do
Speaker 1: you season it? You know you do it the night
Speaker 1: before lighting up at the opportunity to share her jerk
Speaker 1: chicken recipe, Antoinette can often take a moment to open
Speaker 1: up when you first meet her. As her best friend
Speaker 1: Anicia Daily explains, she's very much like a consistent person.
Speaker 1: She's loyal. She definitely has your back, like she'll eventually
Speaker 1: warm up to you when she meet you a couple
Speaker 1: other times, but um, don't take your personal Ansia and
Speaker 1: Antoinette have known each other for over twenty five years,
Speaker 1: becoming friends back in elementary school. When they were young,
Speaker 1: Antoinette faced many moments with her peers that would reshape
Speaker 1: how she saw the world and how she felt the
Speaker 1: world saw her moments that made aunt when I feel
Speaker 1: embarrassed about having sickle cell disease. Sickle cell effects more
Speaker 1: than one hundred thousand people in the US alone and
Speaker 1: lowers one's life expectancy from seventy eight to fifty four years.
Speaker 1: It's a disease that Antoinette has been battling her entire life.
Speaker 1: I don't tell people right off because when I was
Speaker 1: in elementary school about eight nine years old, I had
Speaker 1: got sick and I missed a lot of school. So
Speaker 1: when I came back, you know, they was like, okay,
Speaker 1: why were you out, So me being a kid and
Speaker 1: thinking these are my friends, I was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: I have this thing called sickle song. The next day,
Speaker 1: when we came to school, I noticed that the friends
Speaker 1: that I used to hang out with it was very distant.
Speaker 1: So apparently one of the girls went home and told
Speaker 1: her mom like, oh you know, mom, I have this.
Speaker 1: Go to my class. One of my friends, her name
Speaker 1: is in Swine, and she had sickle song. To my understanding,
Speaker 1: the mother was very uninformed because she's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we can't be a friend anymore because you have sickle
Speaker 1: cell and we don't want to catch it. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how traumatic that must have been for you in
Speaker 1: elementary school to be honest about your what you're dealing
Speaker 1: with in terms of a health challenge, and having kids
Speaker 1: treat you as if you're contagious. So from that, I
Speaker 1: hesitated a lot, a lot to tell people that I
Speaker 1: have su so and I even have boyfriends that we dated,
Speaker 1: and to this day they don't know. Sickle cell caused
Speaker 1: down Toinette considerable pain and torment, the complications of oregon
Speaker 1: damage from this disease, and on top of everything else,
Speaker 1: feeling excluded and embarrassed or all she knew, But it
Speaker 1: would take a long time for Antoinette to understand and
Speaker 1: vocalize that there might be more to her experience than
Speaker 1: simply sickle cell. Taking a step back, what is sickle
Speaker 1: cell and how does it manifest itself in people? Sickle
Speaker 1: cell disease is an inherited red blood disorder which is
Speaker 1: characterized by chronic anemia, unpredictable episodes of pain and damage
Speaker 1: to the internal organs that begin in early childhood, and
Speaker 1: it leads to altered functioning, poor quality of life for
Speaker 1: patients and early mortality. This is in a nutshell about
Speaker 1: cickle cell disease. That's Dr John Mattu, Antoinette's doctor and
Speaker 1: the director of the adult sickle cell program at King's
Speaker 1: County Hospital in Brooklyn. He's been seeing Antoinette for almost
Speaker 1: a decade now and fully understands her illness. Their relationship
Speaker 1: would become integral to Antoinette learning to manage her symptoms.
Speaker 1: These times where you could have pain in one place,
Speaker 1: but it's times where as you linger and as it
Speaker 1: goes on, it's moving from your backs and your arms
Speaker 1: and your legs, you know, and then full on crisis.
Speaker 1: So crisis basically is debilitating pain for a patient with
Speaker 1: sickle cell disease. It is quite unpredictable. The patients might
Speaker 1: be wellnest minute, but the next minute they are an
Speaker 1: orgonizing pain, which if not treated in a timely fashion,
Speaker 1: could escalate needing hospitalization. The sickle cell is detected by
Speaker 1: a blood test that is part of a routine newborn screening.
Speaker 1: Being faced with the complications of sickle cell from birth,
Speaker 1: Antoinette was not expected to live long. In fact, her
Speaker 1: initial doctor has painted a very grim picture for Antoinette
Speaker 1: and her parents the doctor turns to my mom and
Speaker 1: was like, oh, woll enjoy her now while you can,
Speaker 1: because the life expectancy. If she lives to see five
Speaker 1: years old, say thank god. So then when I turned five,
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, well if she lives to seats in,
Speaker 1: say thank god. Then it was like, oh maybe when
Speaker 1: she's eighteen. Every year were telling this lady that John
Speaker 1: is going to die. At this age. I can't even
Speaker 1: imagine how difficult that must have been for your mom
Speaker 1: to navigate. I mean, thankfully your mom had a medical
Speaker 1: profession background. As a nurse practitioner, Antoinette's mom was very
Speaker 1: aware of the hardships and complications associated with sickle cell
Speaker 1: but unaware she carried the sickle cell trait until Antoinette
Speaker 1: was born. Her mother couldn't have imagined the particular complications
Speaker 1: her own daughter would face as a child. Growing up,
Speaker 1: Antoinette was often in and out of the hospital battling
Speaker 1: her sickle cell crises, and many times had to bear
Speaker 1: that burden alone. Mama was a single mom, so even
Speaker 1: with me being the hospital, you know, there's some people
Speaker 1: where they can take time off of where she couldn't
Speaker 1: do that. When you're younger, like I don't have nobody
Speaker 1: to advocate for me because my mom is not here
Speaker 1: at the time. These people have to make decisions for me.
Speaker 1: So even when you're young, you're telling them you're in
Speaker 1: pain before they even bring it to you. In pediatrics,
Speaker 1: like they question are you sure you're in me? Those
Speaker 1: were the first glimpses Antoinette had of the struggle to
Speaker 1: receive proper care, a trend that would continue, but the
Speaker 1: exception to that in Antoinette's cases. Dr Mattu when he
Speaker 1: started seeing Antoinette in two thousand thirteen, he noticed there
Speaker 1: was something different about her case. So Anternet actually was
Speaker 1: initially thought to have a variant of sickle cell disease
Speaker 1: called SC, where somebody inherits THEES or the sickle gene
Speaker 1: from one parent and a C gene, which is another
Speaker 1: type of human globin from another parent, and that's not
Speaker 1: a normal type of monk globin. In and on It's case,
Speaker 1: she was suffering from complications of sickle cell disease which
Speaker 1: were not as expected for somebody with SC. So we
Speaker 1: noticed that uniqueness in her disease and we thought that
Speaker 1: we should look further. Dr Mattou's approach to care considered
Speaker 1: the person behind the disease, and that is exactly why
Speaker 1: Antoinette has always appreciated going to him for care and
Speaker 1: was able to open up to him and alleviate some
Speaker 1: of the shame she had been carrying. But something still
Speaker 1: wasn't quite right. The crisis and visits to the hospital
Speaker 1: were too recurrent for it to be just the diagnosed
Speaker 1: sickle cell. Very frequent hospitalizations. She needed stronger pain medications
Speaker 1: to control her pain, which was quite out of the
Speaker 1: ordinary for somebody with the type which we initially thought
Speaker 1: she was having, which is the SC type which I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. That type is supposed to be slightly less severe,
Speaker 1: so thinking that she has SC, we were treating her,
Speaker 1: and then we saw that her presentation and the manifestations
Speaker 1: of her disease were most severe in terms of the
Speaker 1: frequency and the severity of the pain crisis. There are
Speaker 1: times where you feel like, oh God, you want to
Speaker 1: die just if we put out your misery because the
Speaker 1: pain is so bad. On top of the social exclusion
Speaker 1: and judgment, she has to constantly deal with sickle cell crises,
Speaker 1: which have caused her to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: in the hospital, missing everyday events, and even making it
Speaker 1: hard for her to hold down a job. At times.
Speaker 1: Many patients with sickle cell disease have problems affecting the
Speaker 1: day to day life. They are unable to keep their job,
Speaker 1: or they are unable to finish their education. Because sickle
Speaker 1: cell disease causes pain crisis, they end up in hospital
Speaker 1: and they lose valuable time off work or school, and
Speaker 1: this really impacts not only the life but also the
Speaker 1: life of the families which they support, their children, their parents.
Speaker 1: If they're supporting them so really sickle cell disease, we
Speaker 1: would consider it as a social problem. Therefore, our relationship
Speaker 1: with patients including Internet is not just in a formal
Speaker 1: level in a doctor patient relationship level, but also more
Speaker 1: personal actually talking to them a little bit about how
Speaker 1: they're facing life's challenges, how they are actually able to
Speaker 1: cope with the disease. Dr Mattu has always taken antinette
Speaker 1: symptoms seriously, haven't taken the time and effort to truly
Speaker 1: listen to and understand her. That wasn't always the case though,
Speaker 1: through her sickle cell journey, during which she came across
Speaker 1: many doctors who were immediately skeptical of or didn't believe
Speaker 1: her pain. There's another stigma that they have, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure the selvations will tell you when you go in
Speaker 1: and I hear this a lot. The doctors come or
Speaker 1: then they're just come and the first thing, you know,
Speaker 1: they will look on the chart or look at the
Speaker 1: meds that I'm not toket and they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have sickle cell. Yes, I have single cell. Oh well,
Speaker 1: you don't look like you have single cell, Like, you
Speaker 1: don't look like a sickler. And I've got that a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what does a sickler look like? I don't understand, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't walk around it stamped on our forehead. You
Speaker 1: understand what I'm saying, Like, don't stereotype us when you're
Speaker 1: telling me, oh, well, you don't look like a sickler.
Speaker 1: What are you trying to imply? I don't have single cell,
Speaker 1: so therefore I don't need the medication that I'm getting.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It's not the disease that you
Speaker 1: can see. So how does someone look like because she
Speaker 1: looks put together? Like that's crazy. They have this thing,
Speaker 1: this term call frequent flyer, meaning you're in the emergency
Speaker 1: room every other day. So over her the doctor talking
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh, whoa, she's not a frequent
Speaker 1: flyer inquiring about me. We're gonna give her this medication
Speaker 1: because when you're in pain more than like the it
Speaker 1: helped us better when we get a shower, I v
Speaker 1: and to me, when they give you like pills or
Speaker 1: like for somebody that's in their mind is always there.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you know, we'll give this one pills
Speaker 1: because they are frequent fired. Oh, that's so unfair to
Speaker 1: be very if you're in pain. You're in pain, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, that's also like a really good thing
Speaker 1: that I'm not there with her when that happens, because
Speaker 1: I don't. I would, I would play, I would lose
Speaker 1: my ship, add one more thing into the pile of
Speaker 1: social judgment and the pain from the actual symptoms having
Speaker 1: to advocate and push to get the proper treatment you need.
Speaker 1: This mistreatment of sickle cell patients in the medical industry
Speaker 1: is sadly pretty commonplace, so much so that Dr Matto
Speaker 1: brought it up unprompted that as so many insidious aspects
Speaker 1: of the disease, and first and foremost is the social
Speaker 1: aspects which I mentioned. Another thing is about misconceptions about
Speaker 1: sickle cell disease. Even among health professionals. There are lots
Speaker 1: of misconceptions about sickle cell disease. Our patients with sickle
Speaker 1: cell disease have an increase in their health care usage.
Speaker 1: They often presenter the emergency room or they have to
Speaker 1: come to their doctor actually for treatment of their pain.
Speaker 1: Crisis patients are often in the emergency department and are
Speaker 1: often admitted as in patience in the hospital, and many
Speaker 1: times that pain symptoms are not taken seriously and they
Speaker 1: are not treated adequately by health care professionals. It seemed
Speaker 1: Antoinette was never enough, not appearing sick enough to be
Speaker 1: treated for her sickle cell yet not well enough to
Speaker 1: avoid judgments based on misconceptions about her conditions. And if
Speaker 1: no one was there to take her symptoms seriously, then
Speaker 1: how could she expect anything to change. Her symptoms continued
Speaker 1: to worsen in their intensity and frequency, one crisis so
Speaker 1: severe that it stopped causing a miscarriage. That's another thing
Speaker 1: too that I guess that made me strong, because it
Speaker 1: was one day I was coming from work and I
Speaker 1: felt like a crisis was coming on, like my shoulders
Speaker 1: and stuff was herring, But in my mind, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get home. Then my stomach started really hurting,
Speaker 1: like my stomach cursed. My stomach cursition be happening because
Speaker 1: I'm pregnant and I'm standing at the corner of the
Speaker 1: street to cross the street, and I'm just standing there
Speaker 1: be over. Nobody stopped, nothing, nothing, nothing. When I got
Speaker 1: home and you know, I pulled down my clothes, that's
Speaker 1: when everything just blew. I never took the time to
Speaker 1: really process that. I went to work the next day.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to them and just see room anything. Well,
Speaker 1: when I went to my g y and I told
Speaker 1: him what happened, and he was just like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: to be expected. What's your sickle cell? And by him
Speaker 1: saying that, I was just like, I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: make a big deal out of this because with the
Speaker 1: way he responded, like do the single sell? Just try
Speaker 1: it again? You know having single soon When you talk
Speaker 1: to like doctors and stuff like that, they make it
Speaker 1: seem like the things that we go through, we should
Speaker 1: be used to it because we have cigle sal and
Speaker 1: it comes with the tempritory. Antonina, I am so sorry,
Speaker 1: it's okay, thank you, No, I mean, I'm I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry that you've been taught that you're just lucky to
Speaker 1: be alive. We'll be right back with Symptomatic, a Medical
Speaker 1: Mystery Podcast. Now back to Symptomatic, a Medical Mystery Podcast.
Speaker 1: It's hard to process brushing off a miscarriage or something
Speaker 1: to just deal with as an ex acted consequence of
Speaker 1: sickle cell. But luckily Dr Mattu wasn't brushing off any
Speaker 1: of her experiences. With each scare, he seemed to be
Speaker 1: getting a better idea of what was really at work.
Speaker 1: Then Antoinette had a very scary crisis, which ended up
Speaker 1: providing the final clue for Dr Mattu to give a
Speaker 1: proper diagnosis. One day, I woke up and I couldn't see.
Speaker 1: Everything was a blur. I couldn't say anything. It's like
Speaker 1: a blood blood blood blur. And I'm the type of person,
Speaker 1: as I told you before. I tried to rough it out,
Speaker 1: and it was like the third day and I still
Speaker 1: was not say like, I couldn't go outside because I
Speaker 1: couldn't say so. One of my associates, she's like, you
Speaker 1: need to go to the castle. This is not safe.
Speaker 1: So I went to the doctor. When they looked in
Speaker 1: my eye, they're like, oh, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: blood in your eyes, a lot of blood leaking. When
Speaker 1: they looked at it, they're like, it's not something more
Speaker 1: was wrong. It was late in the evening she called
Speaker 1: me saying that she had suddenly lost vision. I was
Speaker 1: to rush to the emergency room to get diagnosed, and
Speaker 1: we discovered that the eye doctors had seen her in fact,
Speaker 1: and they had diagnosed that she had damage to the
Speaker 1: inside of her eyes. That right, enough, and that's something
Speaker 1: which we don't see. So the issues with her eyesight
Speaker 1: became a red flag and an aha moment for you. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in fact, she also had a lot of pain crisis,
Speaker 1: which was also not fitting in very well with what
Speaker 1: we thought she initially had. The frequency and severity of
Speaker 1: Antoinette's crises always seemed out of place to Dr Matto,
Speaker 1: But now the effects on her eyesight were the final
Speaker 1: indicator that this wasn't sickle cell like he'd seen it before.
Speaker 1: So we noticed that uniqueness in her disease and we
Speaker 1: thought that we should look further. So we have a
Speaker 1: specialized test called high performance like with chromatography and short
Speaker 1: as HPLC, which is used to detect those abnormal types
Speaker 1: of hemoglobin or variants we call them, which are not
Speaker 1: normally captured on the usual test. So the type of
Speaker 1: secus I have is called cecus or arab initially thought
Speaker 1: to be a prevalent in the Arab countries, which actually
Speaker 1: would have made it prevalent only in that area. That's
Speaker 1: so interesting because you know, this being your area of expertise,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that this is rare. Was this the first
Speaker 1: case that you had encountered? Exactly, This is a very
Speaker 1: first patient I had encountered. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: oh my god, when I was in medical school, I've
Speaker 1: read about you, like in the books. But because of
Speaker 1: the the part of the world that we're in, and
Speaker 1: never have I ever met or even thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna we're can here have a patient with that kind.
Speaker 1: So this is a variant which is quite severe. It
Speaker 1: produces a variety of complications. It affects many different organs
Speaker 1: in the body, and in particular, damage to the inside
Speaker 1: of the eyes, which is called retinal Retinal damage is
Speaker 1: quite common with this problem. Antonine had finally had a
Speaker 1: doctor who got to the root of her issue. She
Speaker 1: now had a name and a potential way forward with
Speaker 1: treatment for her sickle cell variant. Through all of the procedures, though,
Speaker 1: they could only restore partial vision to her left eye.
Speaker 1: If I keep both of my always open, I can
Speaker 1: see perfectly fine. But with this I can't see nothing.
Speaker 1: It's just like a big blur. So they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: the cells are too far gone due to the circles. Also,
Speaker 1: this is as good as it gets, so it affects
Speaker 1: my organs like very rapidly, so rapidly that even a
Speaker 1: proper diagnosis for her and and a doctor fully digesting
Speaker 1: her symptoms, Antoinette faced the most life threatening crisis yet,
Speaker 1: and sadly, the situation was made worse because a separate doctor,
Speaker 1: not Dr. Matteo, threw her back into that one size
Speaker 1: sickle cell bucket once again. I was probably about seven eight.
Speaker 1: I was in the hospital for seven days. So with me,
Speaker 1: I told them, before y'all do anything, I don't mind
Speaker 1: taking any tests. I don't mind doing anything. But what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do is you're gonna tell me your care plan.
Speaker 1: So I can say, hold up, this doesn't work for me,
Speaker 1: or I did this before and this doesn't work. Can
Speaker 1: you please change it? He had an issue with that,
Speaker 1: so he made a statement, this is how I treat
Speaker 1: also go so patients and I'm not changing it. Y'all
Speaker 1: all getting the same thing, no matter what. I don't care.
Speaker 1: That was his exact words. That same night, I went
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and when I got up to come
Speaker 1: out of the bathroom, I couldn't breathe. So lucky thing.
Speaker 1: The nurses station when my room was a nurses station
Speaker 1: is right across there, and she saw me holding onto
Speaker 1: the wall like I guess. She saw it before I
Speaker 1: could even get it out. And I had coded code
Speaker 1: and means the patient has gone into life threatening cardiac
Speaker 1: arrest or is not breathing as an Antoinette's case, and
Speaker 1: the CODE team rushes to their side to begin resuscitative procedures.
Speaker 1: And when I quoted, they called the team to come
Speaker 1: and they did the X rays and to revive me
Speaker 1: or whatever. Fine. When he changed me over to hematology
Speaker 1: the next morning, I end up quoting again and they're like,
Speaker 1: the oxygen level is very low and if that could
Speaker 1: be due to the pain or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1: And I end up having a cute chest where one
Speaker 1: of my lungs was retaining water. It collapsed. So after
Speaker 1: that they rushed me straight to Icy. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very it's very hard to see her like that because,
Speaker 1: like I said, she's very solid and she comes across
Speaker 1: as a very strong woman. But because of that personality
Speaker 1: trait and how people view her, I think that's another
Speaker 1: reason why she doesn't want people to know or see
Speaker 1: her in that vulnerable state. The first time I saw
Speaker 1: her like that, I was like, it was very like.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to explain the feeling. I
Speaker 1: was just like, wow, I was icy you for two weeks.
Speaker 1: But I said that to say, all of that could
Speaker 1: have been prevented if he would have just listened for
Speaker 1: what works for me and not be like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is how I treat all of you guys. Well, Antoinette
Speaker 1: is now being taken care of closely by a doctor
Speaker 1: who does listen and now has an individualized treatment regimen
Speaker 1: that is working for her. Her crises are happening less
Speaker 1: frequently and are less severe than they once were. All
Speaker 1: of this is a testament to the fighter that she
Speaker 1: is and has been throughout her entire roller coaster with
Speaker 1: sickle cells since the day she was born, since the
Speaker 1: day doctors told her parents she would be lucky to
Speaker 1: live to see the age five. The anternet, like I said,
Speaker 1: she's amazing. She's strong and resilient, and she's been fighting
Speaker 1: with this her entire life. I know that she's told
Speaker 1: me that her like when she was younger, doctors told
Speaker 1: her mom that she wouldn't live in for thirty four now,
Speaker 1: so's a blessing. So I'm sure, with her strength will
Speaker 1: be living together for a very long time. She has
Speaker 1: had a remarkable improvement in her condition. Her pain is
Speaker 1: much better than what it used to be before. She
Speaker 1: has had very few severe pain crisis She has had
Speaker 1: very few, for at all, hospital admissions in recent years,
Speaker 1: and we do not see any further organ damage in
Speaker 1: her case. It's stressful because as a sickler, in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind, at least for me, every day
Speaker 1: when you wake up, you like, thank goodness, I'm not
Speaker 1: in pain, But you always had that in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind through a turbulent childhood, dealing with crises,
Speaker 1: sometimes alone in a hospital, having to advocate for her
Speaker 1: own proper treatment, to being excluded and feeling embarrassed by
Speaker 1: her debilitating disease to struggling to understand the severity of
Speaker 1: her symptoms. Antoinette went on a heartbreaking journey to get
Speaker 1: her diagnosis, but she has a very optimistic view on
Speaker 1: where treatments for sickle cell are headed, and has already
Speaker 1: seen a lot of progress in the general knowledge about
Speaker 1: the disease during her lifetime, in particular from Dr Mattu
Speaker 1: and his staff. I'm happy to see that now people
Speaker 1: are speaking about it more and we're getting more support,
Speaker 1: and people are asking questions and how you guys are
Speaker 1: doing this podcast and they have commercials. Back then, you
Speaker 1: never saw that they even have children that have suple selves.
Speaker 1: And that's what gives me the hope because before no,
Speaker 1: I didn't have hope for no cure because it wasn't
Speaker 1: me spoken about. It was just sweep under the rug.
Speaker 1: But now that it's getting more spotline, that's what gives
Speaker 1: me the hope, like maybe one day because we came far.
Speaker 1: Both the Antoinette and Anetia will probably agree that Antoinette
Speaker 1: has gained much strength and appreciation for life through all
Speaker 1: her trials and tribulations. But the one thing they won't
Speaker 1: agree on is who has the best jerk chicken recipe?
Speaker 1: All right, be honest, who has the better jerk chicken recipe?
Speaker 1: Then me? I'm Jamaican. It's Jamaican. It's a Jamaican rest
Speaker 1: sup so yeah? Um in swan it Monica ocock and
Speaker 1: the type is called sickle cell oh abub. To find
Speaker 1: out more information on sickle cell disease, visit the Sickle
Speaker 1: Cell Disease Association of America at sickle Cell Disease dot org. Additionally,
Speaker 1: King's County Hospital does not endorse any pharmaceutical companies or medications.
Speaker 1: Please consult your doctor for any direct health concerns. On
Speaker 1: the next episode of Symptomatic, Cam is rapidly losing her
Speaker 1: motor skills, being attacked by an unknown and unseen disease.
Speaker 1: In a matter of months. She goes from starring on
Speaker 1: her high school soccer team to struggling to make it
Speaker 1: up the stairs. I think there's something wrong, something is
Speaker 1: going on, And there was still that hesitance of like, oh, Cam,
Speaker 1: you're just not trying hard enough, so you're placing all
Speaker 1: the blame on yourself. Cam bounces between multiple doctors, rushing
Speaker 1: to mind an answer to what is taking away her
Speaker 1: mobility before she loses control of everything? Symptomatic a Medical
Speaker 1: Mystery Podcast is an original podcast from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Are shows hosted by me Lauren Bright Pacheco. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Matt Romano and myself. Our EP of post production
Speaker 1: is James Foster. Our producers are crra Kaiser and John Irwin.