You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Maddie's a fire here with NPR Health Correspondent Rob Stein, Rob.

Are you excited?

I am so excited.

Okay, so here's the deal.

This episode reveals the early first results of a groundbreaking medical experiment to treat

a woman named Victoria Gray.

Rob has been reporting on Victoria's journey exclusively for NPR and everything you're

about to hear makes a lot more sense if you hear our first episode about Victoria from

November 4th.

So if you miss that, go back and listen.

But Rob, for all the people, most of the people who are too impatient to go back to November

4th, set this up for me.

Okay, we're talking about Victoria Gray.

She's 34, she lives in Mississippi and she has four kids and she has sickle cell disease.

And that's an awful genetic condition where your red blood cells, you know, the ones that

carry oxygen.

Instead of being, you know, squishy and normal and healthy, they're sticky and misshapen

in this sickle shape, then it causes terrible pain.

And people with sickle cell, they often don't make it past their 40s.

It's a huge problem.

Something like 100,000 Americans of sickle cell and millions of people around the globe.

...