When I first heard the word Lupus I was just 9 years old, and I thought “this must be a doctor term for bad fever, and I’ll be back playing hockey in a week,” and boy was I wrong. My Lupus diagnosis was confirmed when I was 13 years old, and today I am 26 years old, still battling through that bad fever I thought I had.
So what is Lupus? Lupus is a disease where the body's immune systems attacks (autoimmune) its own healthy tissues and organs, which results in complications with skin, joints, kidneys, lung, heart, and/or blood. In my case, it was my white blood cells and platelets cells that dropped dangerously low on two separate instances in my life.
People diagnosed with lupus are always persevering through symptoms such as joint pain, extreme fatigue, sun/light sensitivity, mental fog, skin rashes, hair loss, and many more. When health complications and symptoms become severe it is called a flare, and they come in ebbs and flows that can be caused by excess sun exposure, stress, toxins, or seemingly random.
Living and growing up with this disease I always felt very alone with no one to related to, and misunderstood, people always use to say, “Miguel, why do you sleep so much?”. To answer their question, a person with Lupus must always "listen to their bodies" because in the event their bodies become under high stress (ie. exhaustion) this can lead to serious flare, and this is why I sleep so much. Most of my teenage years were spent coping with lupus, being so young it was very difficult for my peers to truly understand what I was going through.
In this section of my blog, I am hoping to increase awareness, and to create a support network for anyone coping with this autoimmune disease by sharing my stories, hardships, and health tips.
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