Can I Blame Lupus?
Can I Blame Lupus? Marlene Thames clearly remembers cleaning her Charlotte, NC, home and heading to the space under the stairs to retrieve her Christmas decorations. The next thing she remembers is waking on the floor beneath the stairs, unsure of how long she had been there or just why she was there in the first place.
How to Deal With Confusing Complications and Concerns
By Mary Dixon Lebeau
“I had lost a good 20 minutes,” the retired middle school assistant principal says. It was one of three fainting spells she has had since 2008. Each time, Thames, 55, wondered if the fainting was connected to aging or to the stroke she had 10 years earlier. She thought it might even be somehow connected to lupus, which she had been diagnosed with in October 2000.
Most people living with lupus are also living with the unanswered question, “Is the symptom I’m experiencing connected somehow to the disease?”
Some people suffer fainting spells; some experience skin issues or shortness of breath, while others have headaches or mouth sores. Each of these could be manifestations of lupus, side effects of medication taken for lupus treatment—or something else entirely. Unfortunately, the answers are never as clear as the question.
For example, consider fainting. “Fainting by itself is not a sign of lupus, but an epileptic seizure may be,” says Peter Schur, M.D., of the Department of Rheumatology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Most people who have epileptic seizures do not have lupus, but someone with lupus could experience a petit mal seizure, which may include fainting or sitting and staring without realizing what is going on around them.”
Schur says anyone who faints should go to the hospital for a full examination to find out exactly what is going on. “[Fainting] could be an indicator of a problem, but the majority of people with lupus do not have seizures,” he says.
The Difficulties in Diagnosis
The difficulty in knowing if a certain symptom is due to lupus, a side effect of medication, or something else entirely stems from the nature of the disease. “Lupus can affect skin, joints, lungs, the nervous system, kidneys, and other organs of the body,” Schur says. Unfortunately, there is no one way lupus manifests itself in the body, so symptoms and severity may vary from person to person.
“People with lupus are subject to myriad symptoms, complaints, and inflammatory involvement that can affect virtually every organ,” Schur says. One person with lupus may experience malar rashes, kidney involvement, and memory loss, while another can have seizures, pleurisy, or hair loss. Though any of these symptoms could be a manifestation of lupus, they also could signal another problem.
Because lupus is different in each individual case, people living with lupus must communicate with their doctor regularly to determine exactly what is going on when medical problems occur.
(Source: lupus.org)
