Will I Ever Love Myself? (By Krystal E. Williams)

It is commonly thought that to love something, you must first love yourself.  But a girl named Suzy finds this hard to do if her own body seems to not love itself.  To her, it seems to be at war with itself for no reason at all like it is in an abusive relationship with – you guessed it –its own self.  This is by no means a love story in terms of boy meets girl, but rather one of body meets…antibody??  Suzy has Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), or lupus as it is more commonly called.  This is an autoimmune disease, meaning that the body is unable to distinguish between self and non-self and so produces ‘autoantibodies’ which attacks its own tissue, eventually resulting in other immune cells joining the fight, thus causing the deterioration and even destruction of that tissue.  Poor Suzy.

  SLE is very common in women, especially those of African and Asian descent, and usually appears between the late teens to 40’s.  The disease can affect the skin, kidneys, lungs, heart, brain and joints.  Genetics, smoking, UV radiation and certain drugs also play a role in acquiring the disease. On some occasions, SLE is hard to diagnose because it has many symptoms which may take a lot of time to appear.  Some symptoms are not specific to the disease, such as fever, fatigue, blood clots, heartburn, poor circulation in fingers and toes, and weight loss, thus making it quite easy for a misdiagnosis.  Symptoms which are able to pinpoint lupus though, include butterfly-shaped rash over the cheeks, rash on skin exposed to sun, mouth sores lasting more than a month, arthritis lasting for a few weeks in two or more joints, lung or heart inflammation, kidney problems, seizures and strokes.

There was some difficulty in diagnosing Suzy's disease, since there were moments when the symptoms flared up more.  She was however diagnosed through having several appearances of the SLE symptoms, as well as taking an Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate blood test (ESR) to determine whether any inflammation was occurring in her body, an anti-nuclear body test which checks for a certain type of antibody specific to many people with lupus, an anti-DNA test to check the level of a certain type of antibody in her blood (increased during flare-ups), and a complement level test to check the level of chemical which forms in her blood, usually decreasing during flare-ups.  After she was diagnosed, the condition was checked up regularly using MRI scans, X-rays, ultrasound scans and CT scans, to see if they affected other internal organs. 

There is no cure for the disease, but rather treatments which ease the symptoms.  These include corticosteroids to reduce the immune response, steroid creams for rashes, and hydroxychloroquine to prevent flare-up, among others.  It is also good to stay away from the sun's harsh rays as much as possible since this can worsen rashes and more.  Most patients are able to live a normal life with SLE with treatment.  So tell me really, will Suzy ever love herself if her own body seems not to?  Perhaps she can take it out to lunch at Traitement Du Lupus to try to mend the feud between it and the antibodies.  No matter what she does, she will just have to learn to love herself during her good and bad days and she can only hope and pray for the day that the antibodies realize that they can live in harmony with the rest of her body’s cells.