The pain from a heart attack is so bad that – if you can imagine – it can feel like an elephant sitting on you. Patients with sickle cell disease, a genetic condition affecting the red blood cells, report that this kind of pain begins before their first birthday and continues intermittently for a lifetime.
Too often these people receive inadequate help managing their pain, a critical health disparity that persists 113 years after sickle cell disease was identified.
