Battling Lupus

        Lupus is not an easy disease to battle. One day you could feel and look perfectly fine and the next you could be very sick and barely move. This was my case. Yesterday I was perfectly fine, then today I woke up and I could not move. Yesterday, about last period class, I could feel the side of my right hand and wrist getting swollen (with no cause) - so much to the point where I had to ask Nicole to write what the teacher was writing in class. I didn't really understand why it was happening. Usually when I have flare ups like these, it means that I haven't taken my medication properly. But this time I was taking my medications properly; I didn't skip. I took in total about 800mg of ibuprofen (throughout the day), iced it all yesterday and last night, put Vick's vapor on my wrists (which usually relieves the pain) but the swelling/hot temperature in my hands didn't change. I could NOT sleep last night; the pain was unbearable so much that I was crying. Anyways, today I woke up feeling terrible. Not only was the right hand swollen, but the left hand was as swollen as the other. GREAT! Plus I woke up with a bad sore throat, so I ended up having to miss school. Of course, I feel better now but Lupus is not an easy to control because it is unpredictable.

The day I stayed home when I had a flare up.

One thing that I've learned with Lupus is to NEVER ICE SWOLLEN JOINTS - it just makes everything worse. Always heat! (: