CityView Magazine

FEATURE Living By Kelly Twedell with LUPUS A local woman has turned a personal torment into a mission S tephanie Kennedy was a marketing professional and an aerobics teacher when she began experiencing symptoms that ranged from leg pain and lethargy to sores in her mouth. In an effort to find out what was wrong, she saw seven doctors in Fayetteville. They ran multiple tests and but didn't diagnose her with any ailment, some even said she was a hypochondriac. A neurologist who tapped her knees with a rubber, triangleshaped, mallet told her to drink more water. As an aerobic instructor who was then teaching classes four or five times a day, the physicians looked at Kennedy and saw the picture of good health. She faced her husband in tears after the visit with the neurologist. She knew she was not crazy. He supported her and asked her to see one more doctor. New to Fayetteville, she didn't know who to see, but she looked up a doctor near the mall and went in for yet another consultation. She was up front with the doctor about all her past tests and the skepticism of the previous doctors. The new doctor did more than just the first time patient visit panel 60 | May/June • 2013 of tests and called her later that night with news — bad news. He informed her that her rheumatoid panel had come back with her anti-nuclear antibodies spiking through the roof. He referred her to a rheumatologist in Pinehurst, as the only one in Fayetteville had a long waiting list. The rheumatologist did the blood work specific for lupus and it came back positive. Kennedy had to laugh. Through her own research online after the seven doctors had doubted her symptoms, she had thought her symptoms closely matched those for lupus. "I never vocalized it to the doctors, because I thought, 'who am I to tell them what I think I have'," Kennedy said. The type of lupus Kennedy has is known as SLE, for Systemic Lupus Erythematosis, an internal variety that affects the organs, tissue, cartilage and joints. The other two types of lupus affect the skin or are drug-induced. Through the line of medical questioning, Kennedy quickly realized that her family history played a part in her disease. Her mother had several other autoimmune diseases. Immediately starting two types of medicine along with pain relievers, Kennedy felt better months down the road in 2001. And, until 2009 the medications seemed to keep the lupus symptoms at bay, but then the disease worsened. Lupus is known as "the great imitator" disease, a disease

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