For sickle cell patients, pain relief can be hard to find

“Sickle cell pain has a mind of its own,” said Anesha Barnes, who’s had the disease since she was a baby. She says the longer she stays in a pain crisis, the harder it is to break out of it.

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.