.:LET'S TALK LUPUS
’m quite honored to be in the
position of writing a piece in
relation to Lupus and the struggles that may face with this illness. I felt rather compelled to share my experiences thus far with Lupus, given my recent diagnosis. While it’s been nearly a year and a half since physicians finally began to point toward this direction, my journey was one that became a bit tiresome; to say the least. I didn’t necessarily have the best experience in regard to determining what was really going on medically. Having worked in healthcare for nearly 15 years, I had thoughts in your mind as far as what could have been going on, but nothing said Lupus to me at any point.
Funny enough, my ordeal began with a simple cold. Naturally, I didn’t think much of it, primarily because I’ve been one to keep a cold almost year-round. My immune system has just seemingly worked that way, but knowing what I know at this point, it eventually started to make more sense. Probably a week or so into this particular cold, it seemingly started to clear up. I had been taking over-the-counter meds ‘round the clock, knowing that my vacation would be over soon and I’d be going back to work. For whatever reason, a cold always seems to strike during a planned vacation from work. At any rate, the cold started to clear up; yet, the joint pains began to intensify. This was accompanied by gastric pains, and severe headaches. Honestly, I had never been sick this way with a cold, but something still said to me that I just had the flu. With so much going around, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me, even with it being on the tail end of summer. A few more days would pass before I’d ultimately end up in the emergency room with chest pains, pain in my left arm, and a severe migraine. Even with my vision being somewhat impaired, I still managed to drive to the ER at 3am, which was literally less than five minutes away. I would be there nearly 12-hours, getting test after test, and waiting for physicians to read the results. It was at that point I learned of my white blood cells being low, and there were some issues with leukopenia.
Naturally, the next step was to follow up with primary care. I remember going to the office, ad the doctor asking me why my ankles were swollen. My humor prompted an instant response of me just getting fat. Crazy enough, she asked me at that moment if Lupus ran in the family history, and I instantly shut it down. I would later find out a few people in my family did have lupus, but that wouldn’t be until much later. At this point, having bee updated of the many symptoms I was having, my doctor ordered various testing procedures to be completed, in an effort to find out what was really going on.
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