These Sisters With Sickle Cell Had Devastating — and Preventable — Strokes

Kyra and Kami never got a simple test that could have protected them. Their story exemplifies the failure to care for people with the disease, most of whom are Black.

SAN ANTONIO — It was 4 a.m. on a Sunday when Dana Jones heard an ominous sound, barely audible over the whirring of box fans, like someone struggling to breathe. She ran down the hall and found her daughter Kyra, age 12, lying on her back, gasping for air. Terrified, she called 911. A police officer, the first to arrive, dashed into Kyra’s bedroom, threw the slender girl over his shoulder and laid her on a leather sofa in the living room. He asked her mother, an oral surgery technician, to give her CPR. Kyra’s lips were ice-cold. An ambulance whisked the girl to Methodist Children’s Hospital, where staff members swarmed her and put her into a medically induced coma.