The story of Elizabeth
This is for everyone who feels like it won’t get better and this is my story.
I was diagnosed with rare, fatal, isolated, chronic condition called Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) commonly known as Lupus in 2017, when I was about to enter in my final academic year at the University. It is the condition that you will never want to wish it to anybody.
Lupus at early 20s wasn’t what I wanted to see in my deck of cards but life is not always simple and is not always fair. At such young age yet my life was forced to adjust into something new, there were things that I used to but I could no longer do. It was indeed hard to go through alone and the fact that people around me had no clue at all nor aware of what I was passing through worse enough most of them did not want to understand and turned into a mess in my life.
My first semester to that final year was hard spending most of time and days at the hospital than it was in classes. Everybody around me thought that I won’t make it and I better try the next year. I refused cause I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring and said to my inner self that “I can beat this” I know that the cards I’m dealt with might not always be a winning hand, but sometimes I have to shuffle the deck and deal again.
I had many bad days and many days where I just didn’t want to get out of bed. But I now know that it’s okay to have bad days. Everyone has them and it’s when you have bad days that you learn to appreciate the good ones. That final year was full of ups and downs to the extent that I even wanted to give up and postpone it. My doctor advised me not to and told me that, “you can’t change what life deals with you, but you can change how you deal with it”. This quote stayed with me, it was a relief, hope and lived with it to date.
I advocating and raised awareness about the condition and try to make people understand what I was passing through, I’m glad that I won their hearts. I tried not to take advantage of my illness nor make my illness an excuse while at school and home.