Residence is for men with sickle cell
Carpenter House to help with transition
When Justin Flowers becomes frustrated by his disease, he tries to remember his time at a summer camp sponsored by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
It was specialized for people with sickle cell disease and helped Flowers connect with others like himself.
The connections Flowers made at camp are the kind he hopes to make if he moves into the Carpenter House, a home in southwest Memphis that will be the first transitional residence in the country for men with sickle cell disease, said Trevor Thompson, president of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Tennessee.
An estimated 5,000 people in the Mid-South have sickle cell, a genetic disease that attacks red blood cells, mutating their shape and preventing them from carrying enough oxygen to organs such as the kidneys and lungs, said Dr. Jane Hankins, an expert on sickle cell at St. Jude.
Hankins said the lack of oxygen causes people with sickle cell to feel an aching pain from their bones.
Thompson will help to educate the men living in the house on how to deal with the stress and pain of the disease.
“If you’ve ever had your hand slammed in a car door, it feels like that initial shock you get throughout your body but it might last for days or weeks,” Thompson said.
Flowers, 19, who is studying electrical engineering at the University of Memphis, said he’s starting to come to terms with the pain.
“I used to be nervous about it, but I’m not anymore,” he said. “Now I know what to expect.”
While no specific statistics are available, a high number of people with sickle cell die between the ages of 18 and 25, Thompson and Hankins said.
“There is not a national registry, so we can only estimate the number of individuals,” Thompson said.
Flowers may join up to five other men in the house, which was donated by Memphians Ken and Terrell Carpenter. Ken Carpenter is a natural sciences professor at Southwest Tennessee Commu- nity College, while Terrell is a nurse practitioner at Memphis Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.
“Everyone has the same thing and everyone is feeling the same way,” Flowers said of living with others who have sickle cell. “It’s nice to see how everyone has their own way of dealing with it.”
The house was renovated with donations from area churches and residents, a grant from Home Depot and about $50,000 that the Sickle Cell Foundation of Tennessee made by selling another property it had, Thompson said.
It has six bedrooms, three lounging areas, a kitchen, and a room that Thompson hopes will become something of a library and meeting space for the men in the house.
“I wanted this to be a place where I would feel comfortable staying, and I think we did that,” Thompson said.
Thompson and the foundation are already planning another transi- tional house for women, two lots over from the Carpenter House.
The educational opportunities the house offers will help to continue the program St. Jude uses to introduce medicines, diets, doctors and other information about the disease to children and young adults, Hankins said.