‘Singing helps let go of your feelings’

A teenage girl is preparing to perform a special arrangement of Coldplay’s Yellow as part of the BBC Children in Need choir on appeal night.

Brenda, from Birmingham, will be one of 16 children in the choir who have all been supported by Children in Need projects, singing the hit song on 14 November.

“I think singing is a really nice way to express yourself and let go of all your feelings,” she said.

The 16-year-old, who has sickle cell anaemia, has been helped by Oscar Birmingham, a charity which supports individuals affected by the condition and thalassaemia disorders and is backed by Children In Need.

Money from the appeal has paid for workshops at Oscar Birmingham, as well as children’s mentors who have lived experience of the condition.

“When I was growing up, it was a bit difficult trying to cope with everything along with my sickle cell, but Oscar Birmingham gave me that place where I had lots of friends who had sickle cell, where we could relate,” Brenda said.

The charity allowed her to have fun and not feel that sickle cell was the most important thing in the world, she added.

“You don’t really know when a crisis is going to happen, but when it does, it’s like excruciating pain.”

People with sickle cell disease produce unusually shaped red blood cells that do not live as long as healthy blood cells and can block blood vessels, according to the NHS.

Now she is 16, and Brenda said she was learning to manage the condition much better so that “I can live my life without sickle cell having that power over me anymore”.

Her mother, Joy, said Brenda had missed a lot of school, as one minute she would be feeling fine, and the next, “she spent three weeks. . . at the hospital”.

Meeting other people with sickle cell anaemia at Oscar Birmingham had allowed her daughter to realise the condition did not need to define her, she said.