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DIAGNOSIS...

I'll start this story in 1997. I was 21 years old, a C5 Loadmaster in the US Air Force, and things were finally going pretty well for me. One night, I got a sharp pain in my chest. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, so I called the advice nurse and asked what it could be. She told me to take some antacids. I did, and it did nothing. After a couple of days of pain so bad I could not lay down, I went to the doctor. Again, take antacids. And again, nothing. A few more days later I began coughing up blood and getting really high fevers, so I went back to the doctor. This time I was given Motrin (vitamin M in the military) and told to go home and stay in bed for 3 days. So I stacked my pillows and blankets against the wall behind the bed and attempted to sleep, but by this time the pain was so bad all I could do was cry. After 10 solid days of this, a doctor finally ordered a chest x ray. They said I had pleurisy, fluid in the lining of the lungs,which I had never heard of, but now have become very familiar with the term. They did nothing about it. The pain died down a bit, but I started developing other problems. Finally, one day while working at my part time job at an eye doctor, I collapsed. I had the worst migraine I had ever had. I was throwing

Here I was...before the lupus, before the prednisone, before the years of chemo. Before I knew what the Gods had in store for me.

...and here I am now. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder why I was so upset with my appearance before I was sick.

photo courtesy of Patricia McNaught -Foster at
Featherwolf.com

up, I could barely see or stand up. After a 6 hour stay in the emergency room, I went home. I spent my last 5 months in the military constantly sick. More lung problems, pneumonia, hives, migraines...a little of everything. Eventually, in August of 1997, my enlistment was up. I moved from Dover, DE to Atlanta, GA. Shortly after getting to Atlanta, I got a welt on my left leg just beside my knee. It swelled, eventually my entire leg swelled up to nearly twice its normal size. I was a hostess in a restaurant, and I could no longer do my job. The three months I spent in Atlanta were very hard on me for other reasons besides being sick. I decided to pack my car with what I could and go back to Delaware. I left a lot of items such as photos and sentimental things behind in Atlanta because they were too far back in my storage room, and I couldn't move anything to get to them. Because of finances, all of my stuff was sold at an auction. :( I struggled, cried, and forced myself to drive back to Delaware. When I arrived, I was in terrible shape. Within 2 weeks of returning, I was having very high fevers, my body was covered in red spots, severe chest pain...a friend of mine drove me to the Veteran's hospital in Wilmington. I got a bunch of tests done that evening including a complete blood count. The first one they did said my platelets were "<5." I didn't know what it meant, but the hospital staff seemed very concerned with it, so they ran the test again with the same results. They didn't know what was going on, and neither did I, but I was sent home in that condition. Around 6 am the next morning, my phone rang. It was a rheumatologist begging me to come back to the hospital and bring clothes because I was going to stay. I ended up staying for about 2 weeks. While I was there, my fingers started to hurt. It was december, so I thought they were just cold, but the pain got worse, and they eventually turned purple and white. So now I had something called raynaud's disease. Basically it's a lack of blood flow to the fingers that causes them to BURN like a mofo. It feels just like frostbite. I was learning a lot of medical terms the hard way. Finally, after a series of tests, the rheumatologist came into my room and asked "Have you ever heard of lupus?" All I could think of was a Seinfeld episode where George is running around yelling "Is it lupus? Is it lupus?" because he has a lump near his lip...So I giggled a bit and said, "not really."

2007 and Beyond

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