Celebrate With Me — Candace Semien

Living with systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome is like building a house out of fragments. I gleaned that idea from Paulo Coelho’s 2024 collection of stories, “Maktub.” It’s an inspirational companion to his classic novel…

Disclosing your health status is one of the most fretful decisions in the chronic illness and rare disease stratosphere. For me, an afternoon tea helped to settle the fret, pull together a circle of friends, and set a…

I was staring at the hospital walls, whispering to myself, “I don’t understand this pain.” Neither did the emergency room physicians and the hospital’s admitting physician. They’d done their best to pin down the “great imitator” using every blood…

An interesting video is circulating on social media that I’ve seen more times than I can count. While it may be just a colloquial trend used to boost a content creator’s analytics, it still offers an interesting declaration. The…

When was the first time you heard the words “advocate” and “advocacy”? According to Dictionary.com, to advocate means “to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly.” And the Cambridge Dictionary says…

We’ve all heard it. “But you don’t look sick.” There’s also “You still look good,” “That weight looks good on you (or off you),” and “I couldn’t tell you were that sick.” For quite some time, conversations among people…

Since 1986, Delta airlines has consistently served Biscoff cookies during flights. According to Simple Flying, the airline serves about 85 million cookies a year. If you’ve taken to the skies in the last decade, you’ve probably had a…

“You know, lupus thrives in extremes,” a rheumatologist told me. His tone was bland and matter-of-fact. “No, I don’t know much about lupus besides its misery,” I responded. “For one thing, your body will see elation and…

Our paths to a lupus diagnosis can vary extensively. The symptoms that trigger a crisis may differ, as do the number of hospital stays and near-death experiences we endure before discovering that lupus is the cause.

Six years ago, I met retired Army Maj. Toni Grimes at a busy Phoenix coffee shop. It was my first conversation with a lupus advocate since my own diagnosis in 2016. I made it a point to…