Course Abstract:

This book is for the more than 600,000 women and 60,000 men in the United States who suffer from lupus. I write from firsthand knowledge. I am a nurse and also a lupus patient. As a nurse with lupus, I don't minimize suffering or pretend that only physicians know what is best for the individual. Lupus is a strange and terrible disease. One day a person feels fine and the next day she can't get out of bed. She may have pain so excruciating that she spends the whole night in the bath tub, crying as she works to keep the water as hot as she can stand it. Another night, for no discernible reason, she may feel well enough to go dancing. Lupus may attack a patient's kidneys, heart, or brain, or her only symptoms may be joint pain or that lupus rash on nose and cheeks. Lupus causes depression. So do sortie of the medications that treat lupus. Whatever the symptoms, lupus is a chronic and as yet incurable disease. What is lupus? What are its manifestations and how is it diagnosed? Which physicians specialize in this disease? What medications do they use, and why? What about the alternative or complementary treatments? LUPUS WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? answers these questions and many more.