24 Feb 2021
Genotype testing and Importance
Oluwatobi Sodimu is a Chemist turned Origamist/Therapist and Teacher. He is the Chief Origamist folded Origami a venture he started in 2017 to engender creativity, quality education, and sound mental health through the art of Origami with over 1700 children and 400 professionals already impacted. He is also the Founder of Origami Society Nigeria to integrate Origami into the Nigerian society and helping people harness the several benefits of Origami in not just Nigeria but all of Africa.
We dated for two years, and for the two years, of course, I knew the importance of genotype and how severe it could mean if we were both carriers of the sickle cell but the only challenge was that I had no idea that I was a carrier and the reason was simple, "I hadn't taken a lot of tests before", and the only tangible test that I thought I had done before my knowledge of knowing that I was a carrier was when I wanted to get into school and had to do some of those medical tests like x-ray, blood test, urine test, that was where the genotype was done and the result came out as AA. It meant that I wasn't a carrier, so all the relationships that I had before getting to know finally last year, I went into that relationship innocently (I went into it as an AA in my head) and that was the same way the last relationship as well. I knew at the beginning of that relationship that she was a carrier but because I thought that I was AA so I thought I should not have a problem, " I'm your savior, welcome". Overtime we dated and I only got to find out because I needed a medical certificate for something and it required me to do a full body check and scan and the blood test and genotype was one of those very important things I needed to do at that time and by the time I did it I realized that (in fact I did it in a state hospital and one of the places that is very negligible for people to get a wrong result for test is in a government hospital no matter how derogatory you think government hospital is) that I am a carrier of Sickle cell trait (AS). It was hard to swallow and it wasn't something I could just pick up my phone and call my partner that this was the case. The best I could do was to take a picture of the slip and send it to her and then there was the back and forth about it that maybe something went wrong with the test so we went to another hospital to do it again and the result was still the same thing so it was confirmed that I was a carrier and at that point from our understanding we both knew that that was the line but of course the emotion would flood in. So because I knew that, that was bound to happen so I suggested that we see a counselor that will be neutral who doesn't have any emotional attachment. So we did at that time and the counselor further explained and painted a picture of what it would be like if we allow our emotions to cloud our judgment of the severity of what we're about to go into, the severity of having two carriers come together, and have babies could be devastating for both parents most of the time devastating for both parents and the child, eventually, the child dies. That helped us (of course the counselor took us to a stage of grieve as well).
One of the things that I will just add to all of this story is, most of the time people especially when you think you like someone and even before you guys go into a relationship there are a lot of irrelevant talks that people strike in a relationship. The things that matter are seen as too much privacy or people don't even go there, one of the most important thing is the genotype, even before you guys start to date proper,at the point of friendship the genotype should be common knowledge, there's nothing wrong with getting tested in more than one hospital just so that you can satisfy and also avoid mistake. Imagine I didn't have to get a medical certificate at the time I needed to last year we would have carried that into marriage.
