♪♪
-When it rains is one of my favorite times.
The rain reminds me so much of my life
and how sometimes you get these, you know, downpours --
it could be sprinkles -- but it does not rain forever.
♪♪
-Tesha, can you hear me?
What is your level of pain right now on a scale from 0 to 10?
♪♪
-For some reason,
I just could not stop getting colds and bronchitis.
So they went to the doctor.
My mom was like, "Why is she always so sick?"
And this one doctor at Howard University Hospital said,
"Has she been tested for sickle cell?"
And my mom says, "I don't even know what that is."
♪♪
[water running]
So, what do you think you want to eat?
With sickle cell, because it's the oxygen
that's not able to get to the body parts,
everything hurts.
Literally from, it seems like, your hair follicle
to a toenail can hurt.
Pick your poison.
You want to play gin rummy or your want to play tonk?
-I always win at gin rummy, so it's your choice.
-Oh, no. No, no, no.
[laughing] No, no, no, no. You do not.
-[laughs]
-My pain, primarily, that kept me from feeling my absolute best
was always in the arms and in the legs and lower back.
So if you think about it, life was a struggle,
because those are the things that you use the most.
When you bend, you're using your back, your legs, your arms.
-When Tesha went into crisis,
it felt like I lost my best friend during those periods.
She would be hospitalized oftentimes for a week,
maybe even several weeks.
-Stand right here.
We're gonna do the same check as before with the large magnet.
Nothing at all?
-No. -All right.
-Tesha is a real strong person,
and I seen that through the hospitalizations.
A lot of times, she was in pain,
but she didn't complain about the pain.
But she would let me know that it did hurt.
So I was kind of her sounding board.
-You've removed the factor that has contributed
towards her pain crises throughout these 30 years
or over 30 years that she's experienced.
But it's really too early to tell
what could have caused her to experience this pain.
And this is really one of the things that we want to know.
What are the mechanisms that are contributing
to the reduced pain over time?
'Cause knowing this may not only help sickle cell patients
but also other patients who have chronic pain.
♪♪
-I wouldn't wish how I feel on my worst enemy.
♪♪
I'm trying not to cry.
Life is so precious.
And though I was feeling pain every day
and it was hard to see a normal person running --
not that you don't want them to run
or do those things that they are able to do --
but you want so bad --
It's almost like reaching for something across the table
and your arms can't reach it.
You feel like it's almost there, but you just can't grab.
I couldn't even mentally at one point
imagine myself without pain because it's all I've known.