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Jahid Deen Nicholson

Sickle cell disease warrior and advocate from Jersey City, NJ, who worked with the Sickle Cell Association of New Jersey and shared his journey on the Culture Conversations podcast.

Aug 5, 2026

6:11
Uh, have you ever felt being that you deal, deal with this sickness like it's something that's like personal, have you ever felt alienated by people close to you, family, friends? Or on the flip side of that, have you ever felt as though maybe you isolate yourself because you know you have to deal with this on your own and people have such busy lives and stuff like that?
6:32
Oh, yeah.
6:33
Yeah, plenty, plenty of times.
6:36
And, you know, you actually go through that through m- main parts of your teenage years, you know what I mean? Like for instance, you know what I'm saying, like when we were young, we're friends and stuff like that.
6:47
It, it, it was hard because I had to look after myself to be like, "Okay, you know, I know that there are some things I can't do with you guys," you know what I'm saying? I can, I can play football for a while, but I can't play football all day like I want to, you know? And sometimes it's hard to sit there and just constantly talk about that, talk about that.
7:05
And then you get into the aspect of people feeling like, you know, all right, once you start letting people know that, then it's like you get everybody over worried.
7:15
Like, like it, it gets down to everyone treating you as if you're like two years old, and you don't want that all the time.
10:36
What do you do?

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