47 — Anaemia & Me

L A K H S H I T A
Nov 5 · 2 min read

Anaemia is a medical condition in which the blood doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells which further leads to reduced oxygen flow to the body’s organs.

So, to begin, I’ve always been an extremely weak child growing up. Probably because I stopped growing in my mother’s womb when she was about 7 months pregnant with me. She had an extremely complicated pregnancy with me, to the point where right before she delivered me, she had to sign her life away and had to bring lawyers in the hospital to write construct her will.

To this day, my mother never lets me forget the outstanding entry I’d made in this world. On 22nd June 1999, it rained like the world was ending and because my mother had a complicated pregnancy there were a lot of doctors and specialists required to be present when my mother delivered me.

When I was born, I was half the size of a healthy baby and my dad says I fit into his palms perfectly. I was always really weak growing up, needing that extra help and care because I’d either fall sick all the time or keep falling down here and there and injuring myself. Imagine what my mother went through.

I used to love playing sports in middle school but soon my health started to deteriorate to the point where standing up for longer than a few minutes seemed like a difficult task and made me feel faint if I pushed my body too hard. I felt tired all the time and wanted to sleep most of the days. We just assumed I was coming down with another bug until the weakness started becoming a normal thing.

Until one night I woke up, unable to breathe, trying to yell out, calling for my parents but unable to get a single word out, with my throat closing in, tears rolling down my cheeks, unable to move.

After that night my parents were on a mission to get more answers and we got lots of tests done only to find out that I had acute anaemia to the point where my organs weren’t getting enough oxygen.

I was immediately started on courses after courses of Iron pills but turns out I’m allergic to Iron pills so, eating food with high iron content in it was my only way to recovery and my parents did everything in their power to get me to feel better even if they had to force me into eating some nasty vegetables.

It took a really long time for there to be any visible results but slowly I started to feel better, look better and healthier. I didn’t look like a malnourished little girl with only skin and bones to her but rather actually started to put some weight on.

I still have anaemia but not nearly as bad as I had about 5–6 years ago. I know I’m still a long way away from being completely cured but slowly and surely, going to get there. Yes there are difficult days but pushing through is all I keep in mind to get through those.

Lakhshita Singh

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