Lenabell
A Doctor's Memoir of a Remarkable Woman's Eighty Year Battle with Sickle Cell Disease
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About the Book
From age 6, Lenabell McClelland Bell experienced weeks of excruciating pain in her arms, legs, back, and chest, recurring every few months, often requiring hospitalization, making steady employment impossible. At age 20, her pain crises were diagnosed as sickle-cell disease, from which she would almost surely die before age 40. At age 38 she became the author’s patient--impoverished, addicted to opiates needed for pain, facing impending death. He invited her to become an experimental subject in efforts to make sickle-cell pain crises less frequent and less severe. For 45 years she played pioneering roles in research studies published in major scientific journals. Remarkably, she survived to age 83!
This affectionate memoir describes Lenabell’s extraordinary life and the enduring friendship that flourished between this African-American woman and her white doctor.
About the Author
The author is a retired professor and specialist in hematology. His interest in sickle-cell disease began in medical school. After graduation, he continued to look after patients with this inherited disorder. Lenabell Bell, this book’s heroine, became the subject of his experiments to find ways to prevent and treat sickle-cell pain crises. Their work together led to important new findings and an abiding friendship.