Ayana Huggins’ is one of the first faces anyone entering Newsday's office, in Port of Spain, will see. Her pretty smile and professional demeanour has been an asset to the company's advertising unit for the past 13 years.
But there are many days when Huggins’ look and actions belie what is happening on the inside.
For over 15 years, the advertising clerk has been living with lupus – an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation that can affect the skin, joints, heart, lung, kidneys, circulating blood cells, and brain. Lupus occurs when the immune system, which normally helps protect the body from infection and disease, attacks its own tissues.
“When I get flare-ups, I wake up in pain and I go to sleep in pain,” Huggins told WMN.
“I’ve never been burned by acid, but sometimes the pain feels like what I think acid would feel like burning through my joints and muscles...There are times when I just sit at my desk and eat my pain. Sometimes I take six to eight doses of painkillers a day just to get through the pain,” – something that very few of her co-workers even notice because she masks it so well.
“Doing this interview is hard for me because I'm a very private person. Besides my family and very close friends, not many people know about my illness. My mom tells me because I keep everything inside it adds to the stress, and my sister told me I should talk about it. Maybe they’re right because I feel better talking with you about it,” she said.
Huggins was diagnosed in 2008 after years of doctors’ visits for mystery illnesses and the frustration of not knowing exactly what was wrong with her.
“I just used to be getting sick a lot. If I went out in the sun I would get joint pains and a rash on my face. I was often very fatigued and many times I got a low-grade fever, but physically, the doctors weren’t seeing anything wrong. This went on for years."
It was not until one of her uncles, with whom she was really close, died suddenly that she began to get a breakthrough to the source of her constant illnesses.
“I wasn’t dealing well with his death and I kept getting sicker. My GP sent me to haemoglobin specialist, who found that my platelets were very high…The specialist was the first to suspect lupus and did some bloodwork to test, but the report was inconclusive because lupus is a hard disease to diagnose.”
A high platelet count can cause blood clots to form in the blood vessels, blocking blood flow through your body, which in turn can cause heart attack, stroke, damage to the body's organs or even death.
Huggins continued to live and work with the pain.
[caption id="attachment_1035745" align="alignnone" width="706"] Ayana Huggins says lupus is not a death sentence. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
“Then my mom got sick and the specialist tested the both of us for lupus. When the results came back, she was borderline and I was positive…I felt relieved that I no longer had to be wondering what was wrong with me. It was frustrating to be going by doctors and none of them could tell you what was happening
