Xechem International Inc. (fka XKEM)

[TheRaveninexile]

Just another little reminder of why we're really all still here and sticking with it.




A reflection of my past, present and future with Sickle Cell Anemia

By Tyeisha Rochester

Originally posted 7/16/2009


http://www.thewestsidegazette.com/News/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=97774&sID=4&ItemSource=L





I, Tyeisha Princess Rochester, have lived for 36 years with pain. Pain, as a child that made me question my life value. Pain, which makes me wonder why? Why did God bring me here to suffer like this?

All my life I’ve lived in two homes. My first home was on 205-25 115 Rd. in Queens, N.Y., where I lived with my loving mother, mentor, and supporter, Gloria Rochester; my father Surroffin Rochester; along with two brothers, Chris and Collin; and my sister Annette. I am the youngest of all three siblings to bear this curse of a disease called sickle cell anemia. The year of my birth in 1973 was the year that hospitals began to do genetic testing for sickle cell. In this home it was assured that love, understanding, security, and most of all moral support were given.

However, as far as I can re-member, my first encounter in my second home, otherwise known as the hospital, did not provide the previous attributes for a person like me with sickle cell disease. I was treated like an experiment—guinea pig—and now like a drug seeker. Unlike my real home with my family, this institution not only terrified me, but sometimes made me wish I was dead.

My family was told back in 1977 that I was going to die at the age of eight. So I was treated like a handicap and reminded on a daily basis that I have this ‘thorn in my flesh,’ and I can not run, play, or even enjoy a sunny hot day, for fear that I may get dehydrated and sick. I don’t want to be sick, or re-minded that I am sick. I always wanted to be the normal every-day person that I look like. So for years I lived in denial. I cursed the name sickle cell anemia in my mouth, and refused to disclose that I had such a thing.

Living in a home with Caribbean parents, I was brought up on ‘root foods’ like beet root juice, carrot juice, Irish moss, green banana, porridge of every kind and strong back root. I must admit, as much as I put up a fight to eat these kinds of foods, these same foods helped me to survive in fighting for my life. Even today, I still eat these same foods and I’m still giving sickle cell anemia a fight for its life.

A reflection of my past, present, and future living with sickle cell, signifies who I am today. So the question, “Why God, why did you create me to suffer like this?” is no longer a question that I ask God today. Today, my days are spent being thankful for my three beautiful kids Justin (13), I’yanna (9), and Jeneve (4); my loving family and friends; the many blessings and favor that God has bestowed unto me; and most of all the three biggest mentors in my life: my mother, my sister Gloria, and Annette Rochester.

For all of the mental and physical abuse that I received in the hands of medical providers; who failed to edify and really understand a person, like me, with sickle cell anemia. And for all the times that I al-most lost my mind, while coping with life, stress, and pain that surpasses my understanding; and was referred to see a psychologist because I felt like I was going crazy. It was in these times my tears were my meat—living in the hospital, vomiting my brains out with not even a cup of water offered to me in the duration of a two week hospital stay. If it were not for my mother walking with me through my ‘valley of shadows of death’, I would fear evil. But today, I now know that [God] art with me along with [his] rod and staff. I am no longer afraid of the falsified perception of what medical providers may want to call me or treat me as a ‘sickler’
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With this in mind, I am alive and it is well living with sickle cell anemia, because I know who I am and what God created me to do. I live and fight with a determination to live. I have God in my heart, and He also created a loving family to surround me with love and support. There is nothing on the face of the earth that can separate me from the perfect love of God.

For this reason, I am and will forever be persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor to come shall be able to separate me from the love of God.

Yes I have sickle cell anemia, but it will NEVER have me!