“Endurance is the crowning quality, and patience all the passion of great hearts” - James Russell Lowell
If there’s one thing that having a chronic disease teaches us, it’s endurance. Having Lupus is never predictable, the Wolf is always surprising you. You’ll have a good week, with hardly any symptoms, and then something upsets the apple cart and BAM! You’re headed to a flare. So you never know from day to day what’ you’re going to get and you learn to live patiently, biding your time and carefully treading, hoping each day will turn out to be a good one, but waiting out those bad spells. How do we set goals as Lupus patients? We don’t know what the Wolf will bring to us day after day, our bodies are unreliable and we never know if we will be able to hold up or complete tasks… which is why many of us go on disability. It’s nearly impossible to hold down a job if you don’t know from day to day if you’re going to have seizures, bleeding rashes, high fevers, fatigue and pain or worse…
But you get through it, and you endure, and you learn and try to plan your life, regardless of what the wolf may bring. Good for you.
I was standing in line in the airport recently, with a paper mask on my face. I take immune suppressive medications like chemotherapy and steroids, so my doctor makes me wear a mask on the plane because he says that they are germ factories. Wearing the mask put me in the disabled or pre-board lane, and I was glad to be there, but I was getting sneers from a woman behind me in line. Eventually she spoke up to me and said, “What makes you so special that you get to board before the rest of us?” This woman was a complete stranger to me, she didn’t know why I was wearing the mask or why I was in the pre-board line, which consisted of me and one elderly man in a wheelchair. I turned to her, embarrassed, ready to explain why I was wearing the mask, but then I stopped… it was like another person had suddenly taken over my mouth and body and I calmly said to her, “Don’t worry Ma’am, old age and illness comes to everyone eventually, You’ll have your chance.” and then boarded the plane. And it does come to everyone, eventually. As Lupus patients we learn the lessons a little early. The lessons of patience and endurance, and acceptance. I don’t like living with the Wolf, but it has made me a stronger and wiser person, who doesn’t give up easily, and that’s a good lesson for anyone in this world, disabled or not.
