Autoimmune disease

Know the Prednisone Side Effects

Elizabeth · December 23, 2021 ·

Let me be clear – I wouldn’t want to be on prednisone either. In fact, when suffering from a wicked case of vertigo, I fought my doctor buddies who advised I take a Medrol dose pack to ease the symptoms.

“I’m going to gain weight!” “I’m going to have anxiety!”

As a Rheumatologist, I am well-versed in all the possible side effects of prednisone (and similar meds) and feared the worse.

But I also know that there is a time a place for prednisone. Not only was I currently in need of the benefits of prednisone, many of my patients are as well. But there ARE side effects that need to be considered and discussed.

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Do you have common lupus symptoms?

Elizabeth · May 18, 2021 ·

This is going to sound strange and I hesitate to even say it…but after 10+ years of diagnosing and caring for lupus patients, I feel like I can “smell” lupus. It’s weird, I know. But when I’m approaching a consult, whether in the clinic or in the hospital, my lupus-spidey-sense gets activated if the patient has lupus. When I teach young doctors-in-training and listen to their long list of possible diagnoses, I get excited but also impatient, waiting for them to reach the same conclusion I’ve already reached.

Now that’s not to say that I’ve never been wrong. But it’s really just about pattern recognition. The tricky thing is that there are LOTS of patterns that are possible with lupus.

So many worry about having lupus, but do they have the common symptoms? Find out here!

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What you need to know about Lupus – Pt 2

Elizabeth · May 11, 2021 ·

Lupus is not a diagnosis that anyone wants to hear come from their doctor’s mouth. It’s not very well understood by most and although it can be comforting to know the reason for your symptoms, it can be downright terrifying to think about your future. Lupus is a condition of ups and downs, sometimes extreme downs, but it is possible to live a happy, full life while also living with lupus.

What we call lupus is really a collection of manifestations of an imbalanced immune system that has led to out of control inflammation. There are some predictable lab and antibody tests as well as commonly seen symptoms that allow us to group people under the wide lupus umbrella, but the truth is, most lupus patients are very individual with nuances that are specific to them. For that reason it is dangerous to compare one’s lupus to someone else’s and why internet stories of “curing lupus” have to be taken with a giant grain of salt.

Learn the facts about Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

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