Many people are diagnosed with sickle cell disease at birth or as a child, but Ashley Flowers lived the first 17 years of her life suffering from pain without an explanation. When she became pregnant and went to her first obstetrics appointment, Ashley learned she had sickle cell disease. Test results revealed her hemoglobin level was significantly low, and she needed to go to the hospital to get a blood transfusion. Suddenly, the unexplainable pain she endured throughout childhood began to make sense. “My biggest trigger as a kid was swimming,” Ashley said. “I used to love to swim. I think I still have a little bit of fear to this day of getting in the water because it would never fail. I would swim, I’d always fall asleep on the way home, and I’d wake up in horrible pain. Nobody knew what was happening. It would last a week to 10 days usually — I remember my legs would shake terribly when I sat down to use the bathroom. I could barely walk, and there were times I went to school lik...