Doctors Dismissed Her Symptoms—Then She Collapsed at a Work Conference

Photo courtesy of Aleta When Aleta was first diagnosed with lupus, she wasn’t ready to share her diagnosis with anyone beyond her closest family and friends. She wasn’t ashamed—far from it—but the idea of being treated differently made her uneasy. She didn’t want pity, nor did she want people to look at her and only see her illness.  “I was diagnosed with lupus 10 years ago, and my process to diagnosis was not an easy one. I was losing my hair, and I went to a dermatologist to see about the hair loss. At that time, I was told I was potentially stressed and the stress was causing my hair loss. So I was given something to help with that,” Aleta tells BlackDoctor.org.  The treatment worked temporarily. However, a couple of months later, she went back because the hair loss started happening again.  “They gave me something else,” Aleta recalls. “But then one day, I was starting to feel sick, like I thought I had the flu. So I went to urgent care because I had a temperature. They couldn’t really figure out what was wrong. They ran some tests, and the doctor then told me that I had a...