I was a dental nurse until things went horribly wrong, not just for me but for my family too. It all started in January 2000. I had a pain in my left foot, at the time I just thought it was from wearing high heels at the Christmas work party! The pain got worse and then, when I woke up one morning, I noticed that the middle finger on my left hand was white. I felt generally unwell and then noticed that another finger was also white.

I was a teenager when I first noticed the symptoms. I had swollen knees, Rashes on my face, back and neck and would slip in and out of depression with erratic moods swings. I thought it was puberty! I was also experiencing recurring headaches, mouth ulcers, swollen knees and aching muscles in my arms and legs.

Jude Clarke is a professional artist and art educator. She has shown her work in curated one-woman and juried group shows in Vernon, Kelowna, Vancouver and Strasbourg, France. Her work is held in private collections in Canada, France and other countries...

I was diagnosed with Lupus (SLE) at the tender age of 18, after two years of severe Raynauds. Naturally I was devastated to discover I had Lupus, as like most people, I had no idea what it actually meant. Reading medical books made the disease sound fatal so I had no idea what my future held.

I had been sick since I was 16 years old, grand mal seizures, arthritic type symptoms in my knees and hands, pneumonia, etc. It was passed off as nothing I was just sick. As I turned to my 20's the migraines started it was passed off by Doctors as "stress related" or "hormone related". Arthritic pain continued.. anti inflammatory were prescribed.

This fantastic poem was written for us by Kendra Agnew when she was 15. Kendra had suffered with SLE from the age of ten. She said "I was reading the website and came across some poetry. I enjoy writing poetry and often express my emotions when I'm ill through poetry".

Kendra sadly passed away aged just 21 in March 2011.

I am 46 now and was diagnosed in 2007 by professor D'Cruz. However, my story began in childhood, so I will try to give you a condensed form of almost 40 years of suffering in one way or another, without boring you to tears...

Imagine strolling along, minding your own business or obediently going about The Father's and BLAM! you're knocked off your feet. Well, that's exactly what happened to me in 2005. One moment I was an extremely busy office manager with no serious medical problems and seemingly the next, my primary care physician was telling me that I had connective tissue disease.

I started noticing my fingers getting stiff; I wasn't too worried at first but was aware that something didn't feel right. I seemed to be very tired in the mornings, which was very unlike me as I'm very much a morning person and I couldn't understand it. I was also getting quite down and would just cry for no reason at all, I kept asking myself why am I feeling like this I've just got engaged I feel so happy with my life it just doesn't add up.

When my daughter, Rosanne, was 12 years old she developed SLE. That was in 1982.

In the early days my daughter would comment, before she went off to school, that her fingers felt stiff. We put this down to 'growing pains', but a few weeks later I noticed she had some difficulty in climbing into the car. I then found that her knees and ankles were swollen, so I immediately put her to bed and called our G.P.

Some of my earliest memories are of St. Thomas' Hospital, my mum and I used to visit quite regularly. We were not visiting anyone in hospital, my mum was getting treatment for Lupus.

After many years we moved to the USA because the climate was warmer and that was good for my mum. She seemed to get better and everyone was very hopeful that her condition would continue to improve, it did and we were all very happy.

My name is Patty, I am from Colombia and I married to an English man since 1998. I am in my early 30's, I have 2 children, my son Alvaro he is 15 years old and Julie 14 years old (Julie was diagnosed with Lupus June 2001). After Julie was diagnosed with lupus I had so many similar symptoms my GP suggested that I had some more sophisticated blood tests done. When I went to see my GP to have the blood test results, she explained to me that I needed to go to see the lupus specialists but at least I found the answer to so many different questions that I had in the past about my health.

I had known something was wrong for a long time. Having a baby was an energy-draining event in 1993, to be certain, but this fatigue was 'different'. I told my husband that I felt like this was "the beginning of feeling tired for the rest of my life"! Of course, we would shrug it off, because having an infant in our home for the first time seemed to be the obvious explanation for my exhaustion.

On 29th July 1999 I woke up with what I thought was just a headache. I went into work as usual in a bit of a grump because of the pain, which I had never had before and started to plod on. A lot of my work is on a VDU so throughout the day this was making the headache worse. It got to the point that I couldn't keep my eyes focused or hold my head up and I was feeling extremely sick. It became so unbearable I phoned my manager and she told me to go to the doctors and then home.

It’s an odd thing to describe when trying to explain my journey with Lupus. For me, although I was fully diagnosed in 2011 with SLE , the Rheumatologists believe that I had in fact probably had Lupus for about 5-8 years prior to diagnosis.

Sophia Brown was known for her appearance on Big Brother, she sadly passed away aged just 30 in 2012. This was her story: 1989. That’s the year everything changed. The year a seven year old was forced to grow The year I was diagnosed with Lupus.  This is my experience of the disease people have begun to fear but do not know enough about...