Adekunle Gold, the Nigerian singer, has recounted how a severe sickle cell crisis struck during his flight to Tanzania, leaving him unable to walk and forcing him to seek treatment at a hospital in Ethiopia.
The 39-year-old singer, who has openly discussed living with sickle cell disease, shared the experience during a BBC interview.
Gold said he spends much of his time travelling by air and explained that flying at high altitudes can affect his condition.
‘They almost landed the plane’
The crisis began while Gold was travelling to Tanzania with a stopover in Ethiopia.
He first noticed a dull pain in his stomach and assumed food poisoning had caused it. However, the pain continued to worsen after he blamed a meal he had eaten at the airport.
“The last major crisis that I had. This is not the one I talked about when I was 20. The last major crisis I had happened on a plane,” he said.
“I was going to Tanzania. And I was supposed to stop over in Ethiopia. I just noticed that I started feeling pain in my stomach. I was cramping. I thought it was maybe some meal that I had at the airport. I was like, ‘I shouldn’t have eaten that’.
“I was beating myself up about that, but it kept going. I went to the toilet; nothing came out. They almost landed the plane because of me, because it was really bad.”
Gold was taken to hospital
After the plane landed in Ethiopia, Gold could no longer walk. He was taken to a hospital in a wheelchair, where doctors confirmed that he was experiencing a sickle cell crisis.
The episode came as a surprise because Gold had previously experienced sickle cell crises in his joints. He said he had never heard of the condition causing the kind of stomach pain he experienced on the flight.
“Thankfully, we were closer to landing in Ethiopia. I could not even walk. For the first time in my life, they had to put me in a wheelchair, and they took me to the hospital. And the doctor told me that I had a crisis,” he said.
“The only crisis I have known in my life is your joints. That was the first time I ever heard about that. The doctor now told me that when I am on the plane, I should make sure I drink a lot of water. And that my oxygen level was low because I did not drink a lot of water that day.
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