Medically Reviewed
Lupus experts say to ask for help if you are struggling to manage your condition emotionally or physically.
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The licensed clinical psychologist Monica Blied, PhD, was a 27-year-old graduate student and single mother when she discovered that the debilitating fatigue and body-wide pain she was experiencing had a name: systemic lupus erythematosus. “My lupus diagnosis was a shock. I lost the hope of a healthy me,” she says.
At the time she had a 4-year-old. She worried about losing her ability to walk, she says. “I thought that losing my ability to walk would be the ultimate irony; I had been a runway model for Los Angeles Fashion Week and Ebony Fashion Fair!”