I Am a Sickle Cell Survivor: Ten Years and Still Counting

Carol Mulumba lives in Fairfield, California with her parents, her siblings Mark and Aliah and her adorable cats, Tigress and Lamby. Imagine being diagnosed with a disease and told that you have very little time left. Imagine being born with such a fate. Imagine being seven years old, knowing of your ailments, and knowing you were to die soon, but in a manner of understanding still so innocent, and all the more bittersweet for your family. Carol Mulumba recounts her battle with Sickle Cell Disease as she was thrown into it the moment she was born, recalling painful episodes which stole much of her childhood, the lengthy Bone Marrow and Cord Blood Transplant which would end up saving her life, as well as her naïve understanding of what was truly being whispered between the adults, all perceived through the eyes of her seven-year-old self. Carol is a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Currently studying molecular biology, she aspires to become a medical doctor.

"When I was young, I didn't know what was going on with my sister and why she was in the hospital for months. I thought that she was going to live there for the rest of her life but one day my parents said that I was going to cure my sister. When I was about 5 years old, I remember a day going to the room then coming out in a wheelchair. Now my sister is at UCLA pursing her dreams and all it took was some bone marrow from me and my baby cord blood". --Mark Mulumba (16 years old)

"When carol had the transplant, I was too young to understand what she was going through. Now that I've grown up, I understand what pain my sister had to go through and I'm glad that she managed to recover" --Aliah Mulumba (11 years old)