Written piece
The Sickled Life
Hannah Magoola
Uganda
About this piece
A woman born into the fire of sickle cell pain grows into her own sunrise - carried by love, defying predictions and returning from the edge - again and again. At fifty, she stands beneath the moon, her crescent cells still pulsing in their quiet miracle.
I learned early that pain has sound. Not a scream, but silence. The kind that fills the room when fear arrives.
My first memory of this pain was when I was five. Heat gathered inside my bones, sharp and spreading. I could not sit up. My mother came quickly: “Again?” she asked. I nodded. My world shrank to the soft circles of her hands kneading balm like a quiet prayer over my legs. Outside, the world went on. Inside everything slowed.
When I was seven, the doctor explained my blood condition with pictures. He drew two shapes - one was round, the other curved like a crescent moon. “Your blood cells sometimes look like this”, he said, pointing to the half-moon. My mother leaned forward: “Will she live?” she queried. I had the whispers: “She's fragile. She won't live long.” So, I waited to die.
But my family refused that story. My siblings fed, hydrated and nursed me. Water, fresh juice, meals, stories, bed baths – a repeated cycle, unending. They massaged my limbs and sat beside me through the dark nights. Love smelled like menthol and mango.
At school, pain became public. I many times lay in the dispensary while students watched through the windows. I learned shame there. I learned silence.
At sixteen, I had a quiet thought: “I'm not dead.” So, I chose to live. I studied. I worked. I traveled beyond Kampala. Beyond Uganda. Still death came close. In 2013 I awoke on a ventilator. In 2019, my heart faltered mid-journey. Each time, I returned.
People sometimes say: “I thought you had died.” I smile - not yet.
Now, at fifty, I stand under the crescent moon. My blood still bends. My body still aches.
But I'm here.
And sometimes, that is the miracle.