How it all begain Part one

Hello,

My name is Dori, I was born in California, had a somewhat normal childhood and am now living in Montana. I am 41, have four children and two grandchildren. I was sick often as a child and young adult, I also suffered two miscarriages. These were all things that I was told "just happen" to some people. Well little did I or the Doctors know that there was a little bug in my DNA strand called Lupus that was affecting my health.

I think it would go dormant and then go active and just wreak havoc on my body, but because testing for Lupus was not done often, nor is it today, that I was just sick. Well, that all got cleared up one day when I got really sick about 4 years ago. I was swollen up to the point that the blood vessels were bursting on the front of my legs, I was sore, and just felt terrible. I went into the emergency room where I live and the Doctor thought that I possibly had gotten bitten by a tick. They ran test and it came back negative, thank god (so I thought) and followed up with my regular doctor not much after that visit.

She was very unsure what had caused all of those symptoms and did a routine check, sending blood work out to Mayo Clinic. I did not hear back from her for about a week until I got a letter in the mail. It said Please call Doctor to discuss results of blood tests. I was like, "Oh freaken fantastic", I had just lost my Mom about a year ago to Cervical cancer and was freakin out a bit.

I called the Doctor and she said " you have titers high for R.A. and Lupus", I said OK, and then the Doctor told me she was sending me to a Rheumatologist. Good I thought, get it fixed and I can move on....LOL! Boy what an understatement. Not knowing what Lupus was or did, I called my mother in law and she told me it was an auto-immune disease and didn't know to much about it, other than it was kind of like M.S. I hung up the phone and cried...my life was over, or so I thought.......but the battle with Lupus was on!