Mature Life Features

But you folks at Verena

can squeeze in your 1:30 p.m. writing class

before the festivities begin at 3 p.m.

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I can’t even count the times

I failed math at school.

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If It’s Autoimmune,

It Can Be Anything

A visit by the blahs, flu, endless fatigue, chills, sweats, and whatever is a reminder me of what has become one of medicine’s major mysteries – autoimmune disorders.

More than 100 conditions have joined the list since they were first labeled a little more than three decades ago. Among the most common are rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, lupus and multiple sclerosis. What links these is their root cause: your immune system is battling part of you – your skin, blood vessels, joints, nerves or organs.

In my case, it’s autoimmune hepatitis and my liver is the enemy.

It all began to surface a dozen years ago while on a trip to Italy. I began feeling tired and just couldn’t shake loose of that feeling. When we got home, it took half a year of tests, MRIs, X-rays and biopsies to unearth the cause.

I learned my liver has four major stages: good, not too bad, fatty and it-has-to-be-replaced. Mine was on the cusp of fatty and the final stage. And being autoimmune hepatitis means the doctors have no idea what caused it.

Steroids were prescribed immediately. The first one had to be discarded when they conflicted with the bladder-cancer pills prescribed a couple of years later. And I’ve been told I should avoid getting sick.

I did fall victim to COVID-19 a couple of years ago but got through my quarantine suffering mostly from boredom. Not too long ago, I woke up sweating and with the chills. I felt fatigued, unsteady on my feet and had a cough that was persistent in spells. Was this COVID-19 again, or the flu, or something else?

I felt like I felt in Italy several years ago so I did what a doctor’s assistant suggested back then. I took a bottle of water out of the fridge, sipped some, turned on the television set, curled up in my big chair, and fell asleep.

“Just baby yourself and wait things out,” she said. And that worked.

I don’t know how I got sick so we’ll just have to call it the autoimmune under-the-weather syndrome.

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