I was praying for a friend, who had lost his way, when the phrase “Lord, help him to be faithful to himself” came to me. It was such a powerful message, I even texted it to him. He never responded. I did not think he would. I just needed to get it out there.
Then I started thinking about myself. Have I been faithful to myself? Life is a journey with many twists and turns. It is easy to get on the wrong path. You never know what is going to set you in a different direction. Being diagnosed in 2002 with systemic lupus was a major life changer for me. Autoimmune disease probably was for you too, if you are reading this.
It takes a while to get your bearings after diagnosis. You soon realize life will never be as it was. Many of us push through forcefully, determined not to let it overcome us. Even when things eventually do calm down physically, the unexpected can be just around the corner.
That happened to me the end of 2015 when I took a hard fall and fractured my knee. The end of March it was discovered something else was going on. Something had happened to my lung in the fall, apparently sending it into an autoimmune response and pleural effusion that would not respond to anything. For 6 months I had multiple tests, doctor appointments and 2 painful thoracentesis procedures, culminating in a pleurodesis lung surgery the beginning of Sept. 2015.
To give you an idea of the level of discomfort for daily living, almost a quart and a half of fluid was removed from the pleural space each procedure.
(When you get these tests, they find other things….for me they were a kidney mass and nodes under the arms. So on to a biopsy, scans etc. All adding to the stress of an already stressful situation.)
That was a scary detour, not just for me, but for my husband, who is a respiratory therapist. He knew the seriousness of what was going on, and what could go wrong.
Now I live with some ongoing discomfort, especially at night, and some difficulty breathing during allergy seasons. Until now. This allergy season has gotten my lungs very flared up. I have difficulty breathing with any exertion. It’s time to get the specialists involved.
When I started writing this post weeks ago I was going to write about being faithful to myself while being the main caregiver for my mother. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia 6+ years ago. Talk about a balancing act.
I am sure you have heard the saying “the only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability.” I can attest to that. I am sure you can too. Though we would like to go into hiding, unfortunately we can’t, at least not for long. 
The big question is, how do we stay faithful to ourselves, in the midst of multiple things and people vying for our attention? I would like to explore this over the coming months but I cannot blog like I did in the past. In the past each post probably took roughly 12 hours to write. So if you can bear with me, and a little less perfection in the writing, I would like to see if I can get this up and running again.
Please consider joining me on the journey. As always your comments are welcome.
Many blessings to you. Leslie Rose K
Dominate Your Diagnosis 