1/ I have to inject myself with B12 once a month. This is a thread about what happens every single month when I ask the pharmacist for a needle. Spoiler warning: this is really a thread about how stigma against people who inject drugs costs lives. 2/ To set the scene: I am a White-passing feminine person in white-collar work clothes. I go to the pharmacy counter with candy for my office and some Cheez-Its, the extra toasty ones. The pharmacist checks me out and hands me my prescription in a brown paper bag. It begins.

A patient of mine was told in the ED that she has sickle cell train and beta thalassemia, not sickle cell disease, and so can't be having a pain crisis. I have decided to turn my anger into something productive and make my first tweetorial: Types of Sickle Cell Disease Sickle cell disease is a disease of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the thing in the red blood cell that carries oxygen. Everybody has two genes for hemoglobin, one from each parent. Each gene determines half of the hemoglobin that a person makes.