Those with Sickle Cell Disease need frequent blood donations, sometimes as often as every few weeks to survive. The most compatible blood transfusion for a 
critically ill patient with SCD is most likely to come from someone with the same ethnic, racial and genetic background as the patient.
While high rates of Sickle Cell Anemia is prevalent in black communities, statistics show people of color currently donate less than one percent of the country’s blood supply.
Be a hero in your community, make a pledge to donate blood and save the life of someone with Sickle Cell Disease.
Please send us a picture of yourself donating blood to the Heart of Gold Foundation: The Sickle Cell Foundation of Northern Virginia FB page at https://www.facebook.com/HeartofgoldSc and encourage everyone you know help the 80,000 people in the U.S. living with Sickle Cell Disease.
If you or someone you know has Sickle Cell Disease and live in the Northern Virginia area please reach out to the Heart of Gold Foundation: The Sickle Cell Foundations of Northern Virginia so we can keep you informed about programs and services near where you live.
For information about donating blood check out the links and video below:
http://www.inova.org/get-involved/blood-donor-services/minority-donor-outreach-education
The Bohemian Home Journal 
Living With Sickle Cell: ‘I Don’t Know What It Means to Be Without Pain’
It’s World Sickle Cell Day, and we’re taking a look at the chronic pain and regular hospitalizations that are the reality for many suffering from sickle cell disease.
Nikki Peterson, like approximately 100,000 other Americans, was born with sickle cell anemia. The 43-year-old lives in Upper Marlboro, Md., and ends up in the hospital about four times during what she calls a good year.
Once a month, she undergoes a grueling process called hemapheresis. All of the blood is removed from her body, the platelets and plasma are separated out and returned to her, and then Peterson is given 8 to 12 units of packed red blood cells. This helps to mitigate the pain she lives with every day.
“I don’t know what it means to be without pain. I have nothing to compare it to,” Peterson tells The Root from her bed at Doctors Community Hospital in Greenbelt, Md. “I have what I call my normal pain, and my pain where I need to be in the hospital. They always ask what your pain scale is from 1 to 10. I function on a normal person’s 7 to 8. It’s like my 2.”
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Tagged Pain Management, sickle cell and opiods, Sickle Cell Anemia, Sickle Cell Disease, World Sickle Cell Day