India Hardy sits on her mother’s porch in Athens in the afternoon heat, remembering times when her sickle cell disease kept her from living a normal life.
The 32-year-old was diagnosed with the condition as a toddler. It affects about 100,000 people in the U.S., most of them of African or Hispanic descent.
And it causes pain of all kinds, from dull persistent aches to acute flare-ups, called crises.
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