“My Life with Lupus” is a story based on my personal experience with the disease.
In a three-part series, I tell my story since I started having random symptoms, then when I was diagnosed and my daily struggle with Lupus.
I tell with lots of details all the challenges I found with hospitals and doctors. I also talk about the difficulties I had to face while I was working in pain and how it affected my personal life. Finally I explain how I am currently dealing with a chronic disease.
Along with the main story there are complimentary articles informing on the latest news on Lupus, charts, statistics, other stories, and a resource guide with contact information to organizations.
The idea for writing a story like this started when I, Andrea, couldn’t find any detailed information on Lupus at state and county levels. I couldn’t find any support groups in Spanish, though I knew there is a very large Hispanic population in Los Angeles living with Lupus. So I decided to do more research and I found that Lupus is not a “reportable disease”, according to Los Angeles and California health authorities. There are no tools but there is such a big need.
This story was written to bring awareness on this issue.