I wanted to talk briefly about the results of the last poll, At what age were you first diagnosed with lupus? Now I realize that these polls don’t give any significant data, but it’s still interesting to talk about them. Here are the results in order of the number of responses.

• Thirties 40%
• Twenties 28%
• Forties 16%
• Under twenty 14%
• Fifties 2 %

There were choices for sixties and above but they were not chosen.

My wife was diagnosed quite early, but the results show that readers have had a different experience. If you look at the poll, you can see that over two-thirds of those who responded were diagnosed in their twenties or thirties. I wonder if that has to do the actual onset of the illness or the difficulty in getting a firm diagnosis? Does it have something to do with having children, or maybe the fact that those two decades are commonly the childbearing years? How long did it take to get the diagnosis from the time when the person started to notice symptoms?

One of the things that, as a lupus spouse, I find myself having to do almost daily is telling my wife to take it easy. It appears to me that once she gets going in the morning, which is a very difficult time for her, she tries to do as much as she can before she falls apart and runs out of energy.

It’s like she’s trying to beat her illness in a sprint. The real problem with this is that she never wins this race, because the race never ends. Her illness never stops. Lupus doesn’t suddenly give up and say, “Okay, you win.”

What happens more often than not is that she will continue until she ends up getting so sick that she has to spend time in bed (if we’re lucky) and the hospital (if we’re not).

I think she needs to spread things out a bit more so that she’s not so worn down. She’s pretty sick right now, and I still have to argue with her to rest.

Does anyone else have this experience?