Internaonal Pain Foundaon—25
Tichina. Well, at first, it was kind
of weird accepting it because she
told me that she was ill, and I
would see her and a lot of horrible,
horrible things happen from
the moment she found out. It's like
she's fine one minute, but the next
minute she's in bed and can't
move. And then, there were so
many times when I didn't see her,
where my mom had to be her
caregiver. When I realized why, I
went through an x-ray machine at
the airport and realized, "Wow!"
When I turned around, Zenay wasn't
there. I looked back; I'm like,
"Zenay, come on, hurry up." She
said, "I can't tie my shoe." So, she
couldn't even untie her shoe to
take her shoe off to go through the
x-ray machine, so that's when it
hit me in the gut then that my own
sister cannot tie her shoe. That's
when it became real for me when
that happened, and that's when
you become more conscious of
her needs, and she's moving slower,
can't open the door, she can't
take the top off a toothpaste tube.
You just have to pay more attention
and be a little more understanding
of her ailment when she
has it.
IPain. How old were you when
you started having symptoms of
lupus, rheumatoid arthritis,
Sjogren's syndrome, mixed connective
tissue, and Raynaud’s?
Zenay. I'm going to say it started
back when I was 28...? 29?
IPain. What do you think needs to
be done to raise awareness of lupus
in the medical community and
the public?
T. That we start paying attention
to the needs of "lupies" people
with lupus more. Of course, they
need a voice, but they also need
more information because you
have a lot of people suffering with
it that don't even know that they
have it. I think it will help to have
a fundamental thing where people
just get themselves checked out on
the regular. Train people to look
out for it. Affordable health care
so they can get properly diagnosed.
More literature, more help,
(Connued on page 26)