Hello Hive Community, this is post is bilingual, I wanted to share with you my experience with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), which has been part of my life for 19 years. Today I want to show you the point of view of a lupus patient, and the experiences she has given me.

When you're 21, you feel capable of doing everything. I was about to graduate from my first college career when the symptoms began: swelling in the body, fatigue, skin rashes, joint pain, purple lips and fingertips from the cold and increased body temperature, plus a redness in the cheek and nose area like butterfly wings. Because I felt young, and focused on my internship and thesis, I didn't pay much attention to it, I thought it was just stress.

Already graduated, months later I face a more serious weakness, which takes me to a hospital, where I am diagnosed with Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, and that's when almost two months later the Lupus is diagnosed, being still hospitalized.

The moment a doctor explains what your illness is about, you nod and think you understand, but it's one thing to understand what they explain and quite another to assimilate it. Facing a new reality that fills you with fears, uncertainties, sadness, crying and it feels like you are in the air with nothing to hold on to.

When you realize what's going on, you encounter Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and the investigation begins. That's how I learned that SLE is an autoimmune disease, that is, the body attacks itself, directing antibodies to what the immune system thinks is external and harmful to us, but it turns out that maybe because of a wrong code it directs the attack to its own terrain.

It turns out that all those symptoms that you ignore at one time are typical of lupus, and that this condition is so particular that each patient is different in intensity, in symptomology and in coping. There isn't even a precise cause but it can be hormonal, genetic or even environmental.

Sometimes I think that at the age of 21 I assimilate it, and there are moments in my life when I realize that I have already adapted so much to the SLE that I forget that it is there, even though it always manages to make itself noticed and in one way or another it becomes evident.

Many lupines are attacked by the skin, others have greater damage to the joints, and there are those of us who have the variety that can attack the organs, the kidneys being the first to be affected simultaneously. That is why they have heard the term lupus nephropathy to encompass a complication of SLE directly in these organs. But not only the kidneys are affected but also the lungs, heart, brain, in short any membrane and organ can be inflamed and attacked by antibodies.

In my case, he has even been condescending to me, and although I have had several crises, several hospitalizations, several almost fatal encounters, I have managed to live with the SLE. One day I told myself that instead of fighting the enemy I should join him and I learned to make him mine, to live with him, to know him, to know how to listen to him through my body and as he is unpredictable, he surprises me sometimes, he makes me fall but he also teaches me to get up, to keep fighting, to value, to love, to live every moment and enjoy it.

The lupus in my life for 19 years has allowed me to know myself in my good and bad moments, to be grateful to myself, and to all those who have been there for me when I have needed them, to never lose faith or hope and above all to be a witness of life for everyone who comes to me.

I hope this post has been enriching for you, that if you know someone with lupus you share it with that person, that you give me your opinion in a commentary and that you have learned something new today because every day you learn.

Thank you for being there, we will soon follow this meeting, with another part of this story.