So what is Lupus?

It is an auto-immune disease (my immune system is attacking my healthy cells). You get flares when it gets really bad and when it gets bad it can attack organs. So that is the fear that it will cause serious, long term damage. Therefore and the doctors want to control the flares so they don’t get that bad. So now I have to be on medicine the rest of my life to control it. That didn’t go over well. There is no known “cause” of Lupus although they think it is genetic but then something environmental triggers it. It doesn’t run in our family, although other auto-immune diseases do. To learn more go to www.lupus.org

There is also no known cure for lupus, they can only hope to control. So that is the hard part. I can’t fight it, I just have to accept it and keep living my life. They say flares can be caused my many different things, but stress is one and seems to be my trigger. I continued to try and control this all year but so many other things happened (see blog entry “Looking Back on 2009”)creating stress upon stress upon stress it hasn’t been easy.

BTW: What I did find out that symptoms of lupus are being exhausted, depression, aches, pains, arthritis, Reynaud’s syndrome, jaw pain. . .all that I had. I also do get a slight variation of the “butterfly rash” that looks more like a little healthy color in my cheeks. I thought my doctor was crazy when he said I had it, but my husband and I notice it come up at stressful times. So yes, that is it.

As friends would say I am a pretty darn healthy person, I exercise a lot, eat pretty well and don’t drink or smoke. But just like that, for reasons unknown, life can throw something at you.

The hardest part too is that I look perfectly well. During very stressful times, like at funerals, people would say how great I look. FYI, it’s the Lupus rash!

So don’t think it was just last January I went to the doctor and got medicine and it was all over. Quite the contrary. I went to the doctor 32 times in 2009 and 21 were related in some way to the Lupus. That is 2.6 visits a month. I also spent out of pocket over $3000 on medical expenses and I have pretty darn good insurance, I can’t even imagine if I didn’t.

What do I hope for in 2010? Less doctor visits!