During a recent visit to my sister’s house in Ohio, a childhood friend of hers who I haven’t seen in years happened to stop by while passing through the neighborhood. After a quick hug, she greeted me in one continuous sentence, “What a great surprise to see you, how have you been, what’s that thing on your face?!”
That “thing” is the scar on my right cheek, the elephant in my room that people seldom bring up as boldly as my sister’s friend. It is an ever-present reminder that I’m a survivor of lupus of the skin, or cutaneous lupus in clinical terms.
For much of the seven years since my initial diagnosis of this autoimmune disease, I’d considered this scar my personal scarlet letter, for what sin I did not know but helpless in the sentence of this constant reminder prominently located on my face. As hard as it was to conceal, I seldom left home without wearing makeup to minimize its appearance. I grew comfortable enough to go to the gym or yoga class without makeup, but more out of a fuck you attitude that projected my resentment of the physical ugliness onto the world.
In my prior, unenlightened state, I asked, “why me?” and struggled to answer how someone in otherwise great health and shape could contract such an obscure condition. As with many autoimmune diseases, little is known about cutaneous lupus, where the body mistakenly recognizes and attacks fat cells in the cutaneous layer of the skin as foreign bodies.
Cutaneous lupus is known to respond only to the most objectionable of drugs that carry warnings of side effects scarier than the disease itself. My quest for a cure included the undesirable likes of chloroquine, which turns the skin notably yellow (I tired of people asking whether I’d been to the tanning booth) and a year-long stint of weekly low-dose injections of chemotherapy, among other remedies that failed to be my silver bullet.
I’m eternally grateful that I eventually prevailed in my lengthy battle with this disease, but I’m not convinced it was due to medical intervention.
I believe when physical ailments manifest in our bodies, they are signs of something energetic gone awry.
If we remain blind to, or intentionally ignore, signs that we are living out of alignment with our soul, the body resorts to physical measures to get our attention.
The greater the infraction of purpose, the stronger the signal from our bodies, limitless in power to wound and to heal.
My misalignment? Tune in next week for my take on what this dreadful disease and my triumph represented.
