Katherine C. - Diagnosed at age 33

My name is Katherine. I am from Puerto Rico, I was diagnosed with lupus in June 2022. I went to the hospital and the doctor several times for years looking for answers. My symptoms were worse every year that passed by. In May 2022, I went to the beach and felt so tired and had fever, I was feeling my right side chest swelling and red, it was hurting and burning.

Later that night it got worse and started bleeding and my skin had opened wound. I went to the hospital ER and the doctor said that it was a mastitis. I was not feeding my baby since he was 1 year old and he was already 4 years old. They give me antibiotics but next day I went to another hospital and they told me the same thing. I wasn't sure about that so I paid an internal med, he sent me a lot of labs tests and one of them was the ANA test. All the lab tests were negative except for the ANA test. He sent me to do some other lab tests and he confirmed the diagnosis of Lupus SLE.

Going back in time remembering some things, in 2012 when I gave birth to my 2nd son I had an internal bleeding because during all of my pregnancy I was anemic. In 2018 I had my last son and after 2 years I had a hysterectomy because a suspicious adenomyosis and after the doctor did the surgery he told me my uterus didn't look like I had adenomyosis.

At the time I am learning how to deal with my symptoms and flares. Now I am waiting on the health plan to approve my new medication.

There are days I feel my hand swollen and itchy, my skin rashes, my costochondritis, my debility, my insomnia, my fever, my pain. I just lost my job because of my appointments. I hope I can find the support that I need and my new medication to work on me, not everybody reacts the same to medications. This is part of my lupus story, and thank you for taking your time to read it.