Nollywood actress Stephanie Philips in a recent interview has open up on what life has been living with Sickle Cell Anemia diagnosis.
Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is a genetic red blood cell disorder in which there aren’t enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body leading to serious crisis when the triggers are tampered with.
Speaking on sickle cell crisis triggers “For me as a person, I have 4 basic triggers; stress, malaria, infection and very cold environment” she said.
“I had my first crisis when I was 17, I don’t really know what it was about, It was really really really crazy, but over the years I’ve learnt to deal with pain & crisis, and everybody around me has the knowledge of how to take care of me, giving me my medication and all that.. So it hasn’t been so bad to deal with”.
Stephanie Philips, who is currently working on her first movie production “AUTOPHOBIA” said “Everybody have this mindset that sickle cell people are weak, they die young, they won’t have children, they shouldn’t go to school… That’s a total lie because irrespective of all, I’m so active & have been able to achieve a whole lot of stuff that even most people with good genotype have not achieved”
“Am a kind of person that when people tell me you cannot do this, it makes me more interested, it gives me more ginger to want to do it and prove everybody wrong”.
“Having an online store, running the ethical hacking company, a whole lot of people are surprised and they like see it as me trying to do more than myself but I see it as not letting my circumstance determine my future.”
“if you set your mind to it, nothing can stop you from achieving your dreams, only you. You’re your first priority, you’re your first enemy, the moment you tie yourself with ‘because I’m SS I cannot do this’ that’s the moment you begin to defeat yourself”.
Does being a sickle cell patient ever restricted you from certain activities or job?
Being a sickle cell patient has never restricted me from doing any kind of job, I had my first job at 13, also while I was schooling in Covenant University I had other side jobs too. I have a company that deals with website on campus and all that… I have a lot of sickle cell patients that surround me and they are the strongest people I know.
Challenges
I can’t deny that at times it get really really terrible, but then again when you look at what is coming for you in the future, you will learn to live, learn to adjust.
Advice for people living with sickle cell
Keep a positive mentality, know that there’s nothing you set your mind to that you cannot achieve through God that strengthens. So just do you and forget about what people say or think, as far as you’re happy and your body can handle it, go ahead.
Also, taking medications are actually very necessary for healthy living, so that you don’t have issues of traveling in & out of the hospital constantly.
AUTOPHOBIA What inspired the movie?
People tends to focus more on domestic violence, rape and all that, but there are other issues that is quite evident in our society but most ignored or normalized.
The movie is about 2 different types of mental illness, one is AUTOPHOBIA.
Autophobia is the fear that may be linked to unintegrated traumatic memories of dangerous situations triggered by feelings of loneliness or abandonment.
The second one is IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder), is a behavioral disorder that exhibits uncontrollable anger, irritation and unreasonable provocation.
So the movie focuses on these 2 major illness, creating an awareness, letting people know such things exist and people that exhibits such symptoms needs to get help.
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