The disease of a thousand faces is what many call lupus. Due to its nature as an autoimmune disease, the symptoms for lupus are all over the map, making it extremely difficult to recognize and diagnose.
May 10 is World Lupus Day, and here on the Sunshine Coast locals were encouraged to wear purple last weekend to show their support for the over five million lupus sufferers worldwide.
Yvette Fleming, director of the B.C. Lupus Society, spoke to Coast Reporter about why lupus is such a difficult disease.
“Many physicians worldwide are unaware of symptoms and health effects of lupus,” Fleming said, “causing people with lupus to suffer for many years before they obtain the correct diagnoses and medical treatment.”
Symptoms for lupus can be anything from severe rashes to swollen and achy joints, light sensitivity, and/or fatigue. In addition, lupus can also be the problem behind other illnesses such as the flu or common cold.
For Fleming, the real problem is that there isn’t enough research going into lupus.
“There’s no [known] cause and no cure. The hope is that if there was appropriate funding for research, maybe we could see a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Fleming went on to say that a lot of people who have lupus either don’t know they have it, or don’t want to admit they have it. The fact that so little is known about the disease, Fleming said, makes a lot of lupus sufferers very uncomfortable talking about it.
World Lupus Day is about informing the citizens and government about the disease and hoping they will help to promote or put more efforts into research.
Every year about 100,000 people — men, women and children — are diagnosed with lupus. Unfortunately no one even knows where it comes from, and failure to diagnose can eventually lead to critical organ failure and death.
For more information about lupus, see the B.C. Lupus Society website at www.bclupus.org
