At the Bedside: Houston attorney shares her story of living with sickle cell anemia

From the outside, there is nothing about successful, busy attorney Brenda Adimora that hints at a disease she has fought all of her life. She maintains an active practice as a labor and employment attorney and was chair of the board of trustees of the Houston Young Lawyers Foundation.

But Adimora was born with sickle cell disease, a group of inherited red blood cell disorders that results in lifelong illness.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sickle cell disease affects more than 100,000 people in the United States and 8 million around the world. The disease causes the hemoglobin that carries oxygen in blood cells to become misshapen (crescent- or sickle-shaped). When the cells sickle, they do not bend or move easily and can block blood flow to the rest of the body, including the organs. The classic presentation of sickle cell disease is a vaso-occlusive crisis.

Modupe Idowu, MD, professor of hematology with the Department of Internal Medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and the director at UT Physicians Comprehensive Adult Sickle Cell Center, has been treating Adimora since 2019. Idowu has also served as a mentor to Adimora’s younger sister — a hematologist who also specializes in treating patients with sickle cell.

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