Blind Home Defense

It's the last day of a three-day weekend. I had a long list of how I would spend my time, but instead I've spent most of the time in bed. Sick. Yuck. It's just the common cold. I'm pretty sure I know who I caught it from. They got over it in a day. I am not so lucky. That's the reality of lupus.

For someone with lupus, something as simple as the common cold is not so simple. Because people with lupus typically have to take immunosuppressives to calm down their over active immune systems, it can be very easy for them to get sick. And when they do, it can take them much longer to recover than most people. 

The scary thing is that something as small as a common cold can even cause a serious lupus complication. Allow me to illustrate: The immune system is the body's home defense army. When an invader (sickness) comes along, it's the home defense's job to attack. But a person with lupus' defense army can't tell the difference between the invaders and the citizens. It's almost like they're blind. So when the sirens go off alerting of the presence of invaders, the defense army just starts attacking. Blindly. Hopefully they get lucky and attack only the invaders. But because they can't tell the difference, they may accidentally attack some of the citizens as well. And who exactly are the citizens that can fall victim to the blind defense army? It can be anyone: kidneys, lungs, liver, joints, skin...No part of the body is off limits when the home defense is in attack mode.

And this is why I don't like getting sick.