My name is Nono Osuji and in Skin Struggles I recount my personal experience and struggle with Lupus. Welcome to the 3rd post on my ongoing journey. 


After my emotional appointment with the dermatologist all I could do is wait, but there is a virtue of patience that comes with waiting that I had not yet acquired at that time.  I also intentionally neglected to get the blood test, mostly because they freak me out and I didn’t want to know the results.  Despite my family’s assurance that it was nothing, and that the dermatologist was an imbecile for even suggesting such a thing;  I felt differently in my gut and I was trying to avoid the inevitable.  So in the meantime as I waited  to hear back from the dermatologist about my biopsy I waited and while waiting I drove myself absolutely crazy.

I conjured up all types of stories in my head about how Lupus was going to take my life.  I played slow, depressing music that usually lead to me acting out some corresponding, dramatic music video, and I envisioned my funeral and wept as I saw my mother weeping.  I played out the eulogy that would be given by my sister and brothers in my head as a 50 piece orchestra played in the background;  it was beautiful.  Where or how they got the orchestra I did not know, my visions had absolutely no reason or logic to them.  As I indulged my dramatic, emotional side physically things were not getting better either.  It didn’t help my insanity that my skin was getting worse, and I started to feel very feverish, weak, fatigued, and could barely eat.  I tried to go on with life as if this, what then seemed like a death sentence, wasn’t hanging over my head.  I also decided to get my blood test after almost 2 weeks of not hearing from the dermatologist.  They usually say no news is good news from a doctor so I started to relax a little more about the prospect of my diagnosis and had almost gone back to feeling  normal, mentally anyway.  Although the rashes were now more frequently appearing on my arms, I saw it as a freak incident, an allergic reaction to some external source that would soon resolve itself.  I was functioning until the day I went to get my blood test.

I visited a lab in the neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan.   The lab was a dark and dingy basement office, that wreaked of negative news and positive blood tests.  I shared the waiting room with two flamboyantly gay males, who wouldn’t stop laughing and talking and a tired looking elderly woman, who ate what I could only assume to be old pieces candy out of her purse and watched the old television set in the waiting room intently.  I stared at these three people, wondering what they were there for, and as time passed I grew annoyed with them as I waited.  I was annoyed by the fact that they didn’t appear to share my anxiety and anguish.  Before I had acquired a complete disdain for the other people in the room, the nurse called me into the examination room.  My palms were sweating and I thought that I was going to faint.  I pictured myself walking in slow motion, like a solider who was going to battle on the field; I even envisioned wind blowing my hair about, I was getting delirious.

I sat down in the elementary school like chair, and put my arm out for her to draw blood from and handed her the order from the doctor with the other.  She didn’t seem too moved by my situation, although I knew that she shouldn’t have been as this is her job and she does this all day, everyday, I wanted her to have pity on me and my situation.  Her eyes softened a bit when she raised my sleeve and saw some of the rashes, I decided to go for full sympathy, and removed the sweater I was wearing.  I had started to wear cardigans despite the unnatural heat that NYC was experiencing during that time in an attempt  to cover up the ugly appearance of my arms due to the rashes.  Oh did I forget to mention that this happened in late May?

Besides a few words of encouragement and some brief banter about the heat little else was said, well it may have been, but after a she started to draw my blood, I was not paying much attention anymore.  As the blood started to fill the little glass vile, all I could hear replaying in my head was,  “look at that infected blood, I wonder what it is infected with?”  I tried staring really hard at my blood to see if I could detect any of the disease, but it looked like regular dark red blood, but to me I knew better.  After what felt like an hour of torture, with me looking almost cross-eyed staring at my blood so hard and the taunting voices in my head.  I mustered up a half-smile, and thanked her for her kindness and ran out of the bad news basement.  My stomach was turning and I was feeling dizzy and anxious.  I did not have a good feeling about this at all, I looked around the street and saw so many people enjoying their lives and each other and I envied them.   So I gathered my thoughts, and pondered what my next move would be.  I could go back home, but instead I did the only thing that made any sense to me at that time.  I went to eat some nachos and drink margaritas…  I can always stomach Mexican food.

In case you missed it:

Skin Struggles Part 2: I have what?

Skin Struggles Part 1: Getting to know me… In the beginning there was no Lupus