Sickle Cell Crisis
By: Alethea Avan-Nomayo
Tags: Pain, Crisis, Health, Sickle Cell

Pain crisis can hit you like a tornado

I spoke about triggers in my last post but what really does a crisis look like for me? Well it is surprisingly same same but different for many SC sufferers. Depending on the trigger, a crisis for me could be mild or severe.

Mild Crisis

What’s known as niggling pain or also known as background pain, rating for me 1–4 on a scale of 1–10. A pain in the joints or random part of the body like a shoulder, knee, elbow, finger, leg etc that could last anything from a couple hours to a week or 2 at the same level without increasing. Many of you will know me to complain of such pains if stood for too long or being too cold etc.

Management of this pain usually consists of drinking lots of water (this increases oxygen flow) and other fluids (staying away from carbonated/fizzy drinks as they tend to make pain worse). Also pain relief could be anything from a couple paracetamol with Dihydrocodein. Because the joints would become inflamed, taking an inflammatory would help until this proved to be lethal to kidney function so I was advised against taking any drug like ibruprofen or nurofen. To combat this, I turned to natural remedies like celery and spirulina (which are great in a green smoothie), or a massage with ginger aromatherapy oils.

Then the other best assistant of pain relief and cell recovery is REST. I can’t stress this enough, like just be still! Stay in bed and SLEEP. This could many times get me back on my feet again in a day or two the older I got and the more experienced I became at recognising a trigger early enough and took responsibility for administering relief. Unless things escalated to a severe crisis.

Severe Crisis + Chronic Pain

This is anywhere from 5–10 on a scale of 1–10. Background pain left unchecked can quickly escalate. The older I’ve gotten pain tends to go from 1–10 real fast, within 4hrs or less. This type of pain seems to be mostly located in my lower back and hips. home pain management by this time would not have worked and I would need to call an ambulance.

Ambulances + A&E

Thank God for NHS (National Health Service), Amazing Ambulance Crew (I can’t credit these people enough) and a very supportive consultant who saw fit to write me out a pain plan for A&E. This has enabled me to receive Entinox (gas and air) and morphine by injection and oxygen if required on arrival of the ambulance crew at home. I cannot tell you what a life saver this is as there’s nothing worse than waiting for hours in A&E to receive that pain medication especially if the crew were unsuccessful in finding a vein for your cannula.

Side note 📝: Ask your consultant to write/type you a pain management plan. They will usually do it for free (don’t ask the GP they may charge you for this). This is useful especially if you fall ill and are taken to A&E away from your usual hospital where they have your files on record. It just speeds up the whole process of your pain relief almost immediately! It also squashes the debate of how much morphine (or other opioid needed) should be administered to you, as many times doctors and nurses in A&E will be cautious about this and likely give you a dose that is useless leaving you suffering for longer. Unfortunately to say you are sometimes stereotyped as a drug addict in some cases too. And last but not least, keep a copy of this plan with you at all times.