image
Gone are the days when love was blind or how do they say it, during the days when compatibility didn't require medical checkups or genotype test but by locals means where parents only checked the family background or any physical illness unlike now, talking about the genotype should be one of the questions during the talking stage era even before love or marriage comes to play. Honestly, I didn't really understand the sickle cell stuff until I lived with two SS neighbors during my university days, back then I always say love matters above anything, like love first, anybody I truly love, I will get married to but this particular day, I relocated to a new house and I noticed I had a medical student neighbour who rarely left his room, rarely came out to play and always looked fragile like an egg, I only say Hi anytime we crossed paths, I didn't notice anything else and I will just say "Medical student rarely leave their room, they need to focus on their studies so they can have good grades" but one day, I entered his room unannounced and I saw him injecting himself and that shocked me, he later told me he is a Sickle cell patient and he need to inject himself to relieve his pain, I was confused because that was my first time seeing someone injecting himself, I researched about it and I was shocked a little, the first questions that pop up was "what were his parent thinking"
I remembered during one of our genetic lecture where the lecturer draw AS x AS on the board and started linking them together to give AA, AS, AS and SS, he never mentioned all these results were based on probabilities, I only thought if AS individuals decided to marry themselves, their first child will be AA, next 2 child will be AS and their fourth child will be SS, so they could just get married and stick to just three children which means there won't be any SS case until I read it somewhere that it is based on chance, giving birth to AA child is just 25%, 50% for an AS child and SS child is also 25% which means even if you decide to give birth all can be SS at 25% chance, that is why they keep announcing it that it is a wrong choice, I have seen cases where two love birds had to quit their relationships because there is no hope at all especially if they were not financial capable or they decided not to give birth at all. So based on the question
image
You are ready to marry the love of your life, but right at the last minute, a day before walking down the aisle with him/her, you find out that you are both Sickle cell carriers, meaning you could give birth to kids with sickle cell disease. Are you going to let go of the love of your life? Go ahead with the marriage? What would you do?
There is no other option than to let it go, even though it won't be an easy decision especially on my partner, we should know that love isn't enough and we shouldn't neglect medical issues, the heart might be saying we will find a way around it or if we reach that bridge, we will cross it or God is a miracle working God but we should know, risking what we can can prevent always has consequences, we need to look beyond the emotions or the love we have and consider the children who might have the sickle cell disease, the pains such a child would have for the rest of their life, the constant reminder that such child might die untimely, is a no for me, we have to just let go and heal up with time. Research is going on and I think they are gradually finding solutions on how to cure this sickle cell disease but right now the only option available for AS couples is by doing IVF where they identify those embryos without this sickle cell gene after fertilisation and this procedure isn't free but costly just to give hope to the couples, I also heard those who get pregnant naturally can still carry out test to determine their embryo genotype and if it is a sickle cell, they can terminate such pregnancy but this process can have effects on the couple at the end of the day, so the best option is to end the relationship at the early stage instead of going through all this emotional trauma. A broken relationship is better than a broken marriage.