‘On That Edge of Fear’: One Woman’s Struggle With Sickle Cell Pain

Cures for a disease that mostly afflicts Black people seem near, but may come too late for Lisa Craig, who lives with an agony like knives stabbing her bones.

NASHVILLE — She struggled through the night as she had so many times before, restless from sickle cell pain that felt like knives stabbing her bones. When morning broke, she wept at the edge of her hotel-room bed, her stomach wrenched in a complicated knot of anger, trepidation and hope. It was a gray January morning, and Lisa Craig was in Nashville, three hours from her home in Knoxville, Tenn., preparing to see a sickle cell specialist she hoped could do something so many physicians had been unable to do: bring her painful disease under control. Ms. Craig, 48, had clashed with doctors over her treatment for years. Those tensions had only increased as the medical consensus around pain treatment shifted and regulations for opioid use became more stringent. Her anguish had grown so persistent and draining that she sometimes thought she’d be better off dead.