Queens Sickle Cell Advocacy Netwiork, Inc.
Copyright 2005 - 2006 All rights reserved
To understand sickle cell disease, you first need to know a little more about what your blood does. When you breathe, air goes into your body through your nose and mouth. It then travels to your lungs. Your heart is a special muscle that pimps blood through your blood vessels all around your body. As blood passes through the blood vessels in your lungs, your red blood cells pick up oxygen from the air in your lungs.
Your red blood cells then carry the oxygen to all of the other cells in your body as they travel. Your body is made of millions of tiny living cells. These cells need oxygen to live, grow, and repair themselves.
Red blood cells contain a substance called hemoglobin. Think of hemoglobin as a taxi and oxygen as the passengers. Like a taxi, hemoglobin picks up oxygen, carries it around the body and drops it off in your body’s cells where it is needed. When hemoglobin in normal red blood cells releases oxygen, the cells stay the same shape. But, in people with sickle cell disease, the red blood cells become curved and stiff when the oxygen is released.
Sickle-shaped blood cells have trouble passing through he body’s smaller blood vessels. Sometimes they get stuck and plug up the blood vessel. This stops blood from reaching that particular part of the body. This means that part of the body doesn’t get oxygen, and that can cause a lot of pain.
