“She Just Doesn’t Want to Work,” My Mother Told Her Nursing Staff About My Condition. I Silently Slid My Medical File Across the Table to Her Chief of Medicine. Her Next Shift Was Her Last.

“Multiple times. Even here at St. Joseph’s. But rheumatologists love to diagnose lupus because it’s vague enough they can’t be proven wrong.”

My fingers went numb around the tea cup.

Lupus was not vague in my body. Lupus was the ache in my wrists when I tried to turn a doorknob, the specific resistance of a joint that was inflamed before I had given continue reading …