Happy September! Happy Sickle Cell Awareness month💃💃 YES people! September is sickle cell awareness month, days like today allows me to think deeply within myself to see how I can help make the lives of many suffering from this invisible disease easier and what I can do to bring the much needed overdue attention to sickle cell diseases. Invisible because so many suffers from it, even more people know someone dealing with this condition, and even more than that are carriers-equipped to trigger the venom that WILL alter a soul’s entire existence. Yet these has had little to no impact on awareness and fight for research to develop better treatments and find a cure.

You see, many many, oh so many, are either nonchalant about the reality of this disease or ignorant about the impact SCD has, let’s be frank, the disease is seriously underestimated, timidity fog continues to hover over the disease. My hope this year and every year is that we let that which holds us back from standing with sickle cell, that which makes us mute. This year I hope that just as Pete Frates stood firmly with the ALS cause, I too will make a difference in the sickle cell movement. With that in mind, I encourage you and everyone you know to take a stand with sickle cell disease warriors in our battle to make sickle cell disease history.

Two things about sickle cell disease that I’ll like to share in honor of the beginning of awareness month:

1. Sickle cell diseases are NOT contagious BUT are so preventable, please know your status, another baby does not need to suffer every single day.

2. Sickle Cell is one of the leading health diagnosis in newborns in the U.S. and all over the world, so it is more common than we’d like to acknowledge.