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Testimonies: Living with chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome

Living with the Wear wolf.
What is that? I didn't know when I was told that one day in the office of my primary doctor. He had been monitoring me for months. It had been months since I had had weird symptoms. All of a sudden, out of the blues, I got up one morning and my hands were really achy. I couldn't close my fingers. I thought, "How odd." Then a few days after that I couldn't get up. I was so tired that I didn't feel I could even open my eyes. The fatigue that overcame me was such that I didn't know a person could be this tired. I mean I had worked in hard labor and not once had I felt this way. So, I went to the doctor. I figured I was anemic and I was. Well, a few vitamins with iron should fix it all. How wrong I was to think that way.

So, with his hands on my knee and holding back his tears, my doctor tells me that he suspects that I may have SLE Lupus. He had sent me to a Rheumotologist and they had concluded this too. I had had some other weird symptoms but I was telling myself it was due to exhaustion. I had just moved to a big city and the change had to be it, I told myself. It's easier this way at times. Then I heard those words and the funny thing was that though I saw his reaction I had NO IDEA what he was telling me. I didn't know what SLE Lupus was. I looked at him with a blank look and he was astonished that I was taking this so well. "I thought you were going to lose it on me or something." he said.
Well, I just don't know what Lupus is. I confessed. He began to explain to me that what this is is that the body ability to know when to attack an illness and when to stop is kind of all screwed up. Basically, the white blood cells go out of whack. They will start attacking your organs or anything in or outside of your body for no reason what so ever other then your white blood cells are out of control. Of course, I said to him, "Well, how do we fix it."
It has been over ten years. There is no fix. The years of this illness have devestated me and my family, or better yet what's left of my family. Because this illness is so unknown, the government hasn't put a whole lot of effort or money toward research and the last time they came up with a pill for this illness was over twenty years ago. I think it's closer to twenty five. Well, the little pill that I am talking about is a great thing that it was found because before then people would typically die within five years of having had the illness flare up as mine


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