Halimat Olaniyan

September is Sickle Cell Awareness Month and I'm choosing to celebrate me this month. I have never been the best at promoting myself. Instead, I share my story in hopes...

There’s this stereotype of the “strong Black woman.” The one who has been through everything and knocked down over and over again but still gets back up. She thrives through...

This past March, Halimat sat down to have a conversation with herself in honor of Women's History Month and International Women's Day. In this video, she reflects on how hard...

Recently, I went to the American Society of Hematology’s (ASH) Annual Meeting. It was in Atlanta, and I was only given off 3 days from school, which meant I would...

I have been feeling stuck and out of place a lot lately. There’s this saying about how your 20s are this whirlwind of self-discovery and trial and error. Wow, they...

Today was almost a bad day. Maybe it was self-induced anxiety about starting surgery, what is known as the hardest rotation of medical school – for good reason. The hours...

I have baby fever. I am not sure what is about this point in life where all my friends and peers are getting engaged or married, buying homes, and having...

In this video, I am joined by Dr. Andrew Campbell, the Director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. Before his move to Washington...

May is National Mental Health Month. Join Patient Leader Halimat as she checks in with herself. Making healthy habits is hard. Taking care of ourselves is a full-time job we...

As a child, I felt I was the only person in the world with sickle cell anemia. Silly me. It wasn’t completely my fault, though. I hadn’t met anyone else...

Before medical school, the biggest decisions are deciding if you want to go to medical school, where to apply, and then hopefully, you get into more than one school and...

I sat with Dr. Sharon Singh, my previous pediatric hematologist and the head of the sickle cell team at the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, to discuss...

I have a broken heart. It’s crazy because I genuinely thought I was done with those. I thought I had met and was finally with the man I was going...

The weather in the Midwest is just about as unpredictable as sickle cell pain is. It’s March, so it makes sense that it would be a little cold and I...

The best my health has ever been was in D.C., before starting medical school. I mean, there are lots of reasons why this makes sense. I had a steady, though...

With sickle cell, time is always of the essence. Life is unpredictable but even more so when you have an unpredictable chronic illness. You never know how much time you...

I like to believe that having sickle cell doesn’t at all limit my potential. That if I really want to do something, then I can. However, I have to say...

When I was little, and I would get sick, my mother would hardly ever let me skip school. She’d push me to get up and get ready, saying it would...

Sometimes I worry that I am living my life in fear. In fear of triggering a sickle cell attack, of not being able to do something I want because of...

If you’ve read some of my other posts, you may know I have sickle cell anemia and anxiety. The thought of having multiple chronic illnesses is enough to make me...