I didn’t know any of that when I was diagnosed. And for black women like me, lupus can be particularly cruel: The illness tends to take hold younger, so we’re forced to cope with it earlier and live with it longer, and tragically, our mortality rate is dramatically higher. Women of color are two to three times more likely to develop the disease. In the wake of my diagnosis I would eventually learn that lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body literally attacks itself, had a special affinity for people like me. I’d been holding it all together-and now this? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I'd been striving hard to be the good student, the reliable employee, the perfect parent. I wasn't just trying to finish college while working full-time-I was also a single mom with a high-energy, precocious 4-year-old daughter. But now, with a disease whose calling card is chronic fatigue and flares triggered by stress, I started asking myself, can I still do it? All that time preparing, taking the LSAT, getting mentally ready for the grind of first-year-law-student life. I was planning to start law school in the fall. I was scared about the challenges this new diagnosis posed and how it threatened to upend my delicately balanced world.įear quickly gave way to frustration-I mean, really, the timing couldn’t have been worse. As I drove home, I replayed my doctor’s gentle but pointed explanation about symptoms I might experience: extreme fatigue, joint pain, organ damage, hair loss. My doctor diagnosed me with lupus-a medieval-sounding illness I’d never heard of before. I’d gone to see her because I had a strange rash on my face that wouldn’t go away no matter how much over-the-counter cortisone I used. I was 22, in my last semester at UC Berkeley, and I'd just left my doctor’s office. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play I could never have imagined this scenario when I decided to stay quiet so many years ago.
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