My Drug-Induced Lupus (DIL) Battle

My name is Vanessa and I was diagnosed with Lupus SLE on April of 2016. This all stemmed from my epilepsy. In 2008 I was diagnosed with Epilepsy and put on a medication called Trileptal. At first, it was ok, mostly because I hated medication and was bullied for my seizures so I didn’t take it as prescribed. I took it whenever I felt like it. My seizures were ok, I probably had about 1-2 quarterly. Sometimes a lot less. One day I had a bad seizure in a donut shop and my mom urged me to take my medicine regularly. When I did, I started feeling terrible, less than a year later I became severely allergic to the medication and was diagnosed with drug-induced Lupus and was very sick and in the hospital for a week, that was in 2014. After that, I was recovering and the doctors were sure that I would make a full recovery. Late 2015 I started working in third shift, part-time. It was taking a bit of a toll on me and I started getting some seizures after being seizure-free for some time, but I continued to work. In January of 2016 I went in for lab work and the doctors said everything looked great and that they didn’t think I had SLE but that they needed to confirm. So when I returned in April, they were shocked to see that I had SLE. It was a shock to me too. I became a certified holistic nutritionist by December of 2017. Its been really hard to always eat the right things, but I do the best I can to manage my stress and learn my body and listen to it. One rheumatologist even thought my seizures could have stemmed from the Lupus but there’s was never a diagnosis.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story! I’m praying that everyone that’s suffering from this debilitating invisible condition gets the help they need!