Lupus erythematosus

Your immune system has turned against you. Not against an intruder, not against a virus, not against a foreign substance — against you. Against your skin, your joints, your organs, your blood. Lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune disease in which your own defence system attacks your own tissue — systematically, unpredictably, often in flares that come and go like tides.

Medicine describes lupus as a dysregulation of the immune system. Antibodies target the body's own cellular structures. Inflammation arises in places that should be protected. The symptoms are manifold — joint pain, skin rashes, exhaustion, fever, organ inflammation — and it is precisely this variety that makes diagnosis difficult. Lupus disguises itself. It imitates other diseases. It shows itself in a hundred places at once.