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My insurance company changed my Benlysta (belimumab) prescription to a new pharmacy this week. So, I had to answer all of their new patient questions. First, we worked through the important stuff such as my name, address, and how I wanted to settle my copayment. For those…

Learning a new skill is not easy. But you have an incentive to practice if it’s something you enjoy or find to be beneficial. I’m working on coping with my depression. I’ve discovered that if I want to be mentally well, I must learn how to handle this new lupus…

I love my body. It’s far from perfect — in fact, it’s imperfect in more ways than I can bring myself to count. But it’s beautiful and it’s mine. It has taken me a long time to get where I am today. There have been plenty of times since my…

I am not a natural-born exerciser. No one in my family is athletic. There were no evening walks and no one played sports. We didn’t run unless we were being chased. When I was first diagnosed with lupus, my rheumatologist told me I needed to walk half an hour…

At one point when I was growing up, church was a fact of life. I learned that people tend to look to spiritual things more when life becomes difficult, or as I like to say, when we are tried in the fire. For most of my life, however, I…

When someone expresses their sympathy about my life with lupus, a typical response just rolls off my tongue. “It could be worse.” It’s true. Life with lupus could be many magnitudes worse than it is for me right now. Crippling arthritis, unbearable chronic pain, migraines, brain fog, and recurring mental…

People who have dealt with lupus for any length of time know that it is an autoimmune disease. This means that your immune system can’t tell the difference between good and bad cells, so it attacks everything in sight. It leaves you with an overworked immune system, which…

I was a workaholic; I don’t have a hard time admitting that. Part of me was proud of my work ethic — after all, I was dubbed “Hurricane” because I worked circles around everyone else. Now I have lupus, and fatigue is a big part of battling this…

When you have lupus, every single day brings on more stress. There are endless doctor visits and blood tests. You have to deal with brain fog. You have to remember to take your medicine at the right time. Plus, everyday tasks like getting out of bed and taking…

Living abroad was something I always wanted to do. When you move abroad, it seems people are a bit fascinated with you, and when you move abroad with health challenges, that heightens the fascination. Getting lupus made me witness firsthand what healthcare was like in the United States, and I…