First Things First

So I guess I should explain what my illness actually is because no one really knows what it is. They just see me and see that I'm normal like them, aha. But I'm actually sick. It may not seem like it but I actually am. What I have is called thalassemia which different from sickle-cell and leukemia. Sickle-cell is where the red blood cells are sickle shaped and leukemia is cancer concerning blood while thalassemia is where I don't make enough healthy red blood cells.

Or that's how you put it in layman's term. But everything is so much more complicated than that. When I say it's complicated... it's just seems hard to explain. Thalassemia is a blood disorder in which I don’t make enough hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is made up of iron and carries the oxygen in the red blood cells.

So you know when you go to donate blood they check your blood, they check your hemoglobin levels and if it's too low then you're not able to donate blood at that time. A normal range is 12-17. But because I have thalassemia, I'm not able to make enough so continues to drop over time and that's where I have to keep going to the hospital, to keep that hemoglobin up! How you may ask? Through blood transfusions and then I would have to go back a month later and get transfused again, and repeat that for all my life. Until 2017.