Anyone here have Lupus or experience with it?

I have a friend who has it, she is able to control it fairly well by being incredibly heath conscious. She watches her diet, eats healthy, natural foods and exercises regularly.

She works real hard at this and I admire her for it. I do believe the effects can be lessened by a holistic approach.

 

A liver u/s does make sense if her enzymes are elevated and she is overweight. She could have fatty liver or autoimmune hepatitis. Lupus in the absence of a positive ANA would be pretty uncommon. The more expensive tests i.e. anti-smith anti-dsdna etc... are almost always negative in patients with negative ANA.
I agree that it sounds autoimmune and seeing a rheumatologist early will give you the best approach. Cutting out bad stuff in your diet will likely have no effect unless it is something like gout.

Is your girlfriend African american? Sometimes sarcoidosis presents in young people with normal blood work.

 

A friend of mine had similar problems with her wrists and it went away. The fatigue didn't go away though. Then she had some episodes with her vision, and the doctors now think she might have MS.

It's probably too early to tell if it is something neurological right now, but if some other symptom pops up, it is possible.

 

i thought it was never lupus?

 

Damn you beat me to it.

 

... but seriously, I have no idea.

 

my ex and her mom had it. unfortunately, they had the worst cases and passed away due to the illness. it's really important to be health conscious and to try to have as little stress as possible. i remember stress could be a big trigger of symptoms. there are many in the world that live fairly normal lives with it. the singer seal is an example of one of them.

 

my friends wife had it, but only while she was pregnant.

 

Hey Robbie , my wife has lupus but I don't know what to tell you. It's an enigmatic and quite individualized disease. I got all scared and mopy when she was diagnosed but then I decided screw it, it's the quality of life not the quantity and I have been trying really hard to make her happy.

It turns out though she will probably live into her 80's. The doc says hers is about a 3 in a 1-10 of being bad.

She takes meds, has a little bit of a weird rash, get tired sorta easy and gained some weight from taking prednisone. She's just joined a health club though and I think she will come back to close to her old perky, average sized self.

But you don't know anything until the Rhumatologist takes 8 viles of blood and runs a lot of tests.

We thought we had watched every episode of House ever, what's the deal with the Lupus joke?

 

Make sure that her doctor checks her ESR, CCP, and uric acid as well.