SOML

Dear Providers, You may not know this about me, but I am a fighter. This means I am going to fight you, tooth and nail, for you to do what's best for me as a patient. I am going to challenge you to see me as HUMAN first. I wear many hats. I am a mom , wife , sister , an aunt , a niece , a daughter , a granddaughter , a cousin , a friend , a confidant , and an advocate. I have qualities you may not be aware of yet. I'm educated, passionate, devoted, outspoken, charismatic, funny, sarcastic and sassy. I just happen to have Sickle Cell Disease. But I spend a lot of my time being emotional and fearful that the first thing you see when I walk into your place of work, is a combination of my skin color and my disease. You make judgements about why I am there. You question if I am truly in pain. You may even accuse me of drug seeking. I will go along with all of your tests designed to rule out imminent death, and will ride along as you do the minimum allowed to void yourse...

Today I went in to have the dreaded stereotactic biopsy and after they prodded and prodded trying to find the suspicious cluster of calcification they couldn't pinpoint its location. I was on the table PRAYING I did not have to have that gigantic needle put in me.  I had family and friends praying for me.  The power of prayer is REAL They finally took me to another room and did several more shots on the mammogram machine and determined that the cluster is not in my breast AT ALL . Thank God! I don't have to worry about getting another mammogram until I am 40!!!!! & no people, this is not coincidence this is God. They have been tracking these clusters for close to a year.