When you live with someone with sickle cell and they tell you they’re having a pain crisis, there’s often a moment of panic.
You want to help. You want to fix it. You want to understand what went wrong.
But in that moment, it's not about what YOU want. It's about what THEY need.
Note: For any parents of young children reading, this advice is for supporting Adults and Children old enough to make their own decisions.
However it'll still be valuable and worth bearing in mind.
The instinct is usually to start asking questions.
What caused it? Have you been drinking enough water? Were you warm enough earlier?
And while those questions come from a good place… they’re not helpful right now.
By the time someone with sickle cell tells you they’re having a crisis, they’ve already been through that process themselves.
They’ve replayed everything. They’ve questioned every decision. They’ve tried to figure out what they could have done differently.
They’ve already reached the point of acceptance.
What they need right now is help to manage their pain and get comfortable.
Don't make them go back and relive everything they did wrong to get here.
It doesn't help with the pain they’re dealing with right now.
Those conversations are useful later, when things have settled.
They help prevent the next crisis.
But they won’t do anything for this one.
Shift your focus from “why did this happen?” to “what do you need right now?”
Keep your questions simple.
Yes or no questions work best:
Do you need to go to hospital?
Are you due any pain medication?
Can I get you anything?
From there, think in terms of a simple checklist.
Your job isn’t to fix the crisis.
It’s to make things easier.
Set them up so they don’t need to move. Make sure everything they need is within reach. Check in with them from time to time.
And importantly, keep an eye on whether things are escalating.
If the pain isn’t settling, or they feel they can't cope at home, help them make the decision to go to hospital. I'll cover that decision making process in another article.
For now the bottom line is this:
In a sickle cell crisis, the biggest thing you can do to help is create the right environment for them to get through it.
Stay Healthy,
Lewis
