Thinking of what I heard, my tears flowed freely and uncontrollably from their ducts, tracing a zigzag line down my deflated cheeks, and climbing the bump of my closed lips. As salty as the drops were, they were tasteless, pain can take away taste even from tears.
Click HERE to read "SICKLE CELL: The Sufferers Story [EP I]"
Dad had willed my inheritance to my kid bro, because I have a disorder. As clever and industrious as I was, it meant nothing to my Old man, who always thought that he could have been richer if I was never born; that he could have had more mansions if my crisis didn't suck his wealth.
We sat me down that evening under the illuminated ambience of the porch, where he told me that my inheritance had already been willed to my brother, regardless of my position in the family as the first. To him I was already dead, and it was just a matter of time for me to finally fall.
I watched him with contempt as he spit out those words embedded with hatred for a son he happily brought into the world but rejected the moment he was diagnosed of Sickle Cell Anaemia. Maybe he was right, I was already dead but he forgot the part that he killed me even before I was born. He killed me the moment he decided to marry mum knowing that they were both carriers, and here he was punishing me for the result of their ignorance.
I needed no pity from him nor from anybody, I might be weak as the society has summarized me to be because of my illness, but that doesn't mean my future is bleak, I have a life to live, regardless of how short it is, I am prepared to make the best of it. You can go ahead and stigmatize me the much you can but I would always survive even without an inheritance.
Does mum know about this? I wondered. But even if she does, what could she do. It was evident that she was also tired of my existence, she had grown weary and thin out of worry for my sake, and maybe an extra dosage of Roxiprin, kadian, or Duramorph would put me to the kind of rest everybody have been praying for. But No, I wouldn't try that I still valued my life even though it might not be as precious as people would wish.
We have always survived even in worse situations, but it kills me to know that someone out there is living on my sickness; that someone out there is getting richer on my sickness while I am out here dying.
You go out there, extort money from people under the guise of an NGO seeking for the support of me and my kind, you receiving millions in support, yet not even a penny gets to us. Most of us die because we couldn't afford the cash to foot our med bills but you accessed millions to help us only to divert them for personal pocket. It kills me to know that you don't even know a bit about what we go through.
We may be Weak but our future is not Bleak.
Sickle cell is not a crime, but a disorder, and like every other sickness, a little milk of kindness, love care and support are what the patients need.
#StopTheSpreadOfSickleCellDisease
#StopMarriageOfCarriers
#KnowYourGenotypeToday
#StopMarriageOfCarriers
#KnowYourGenotypeToday
[Sponsored By: Association Of People Living with Sickle Cell Disorder APLSCD]
#AugustusBill
0 comment:
Post a Comment