Flight of the Butterflies Begins.....
Week 4
May 23, 2014
Trude Wessel Thilesen
My name is Trude and I am from Norway. When I was 11 years old my life changed to the worse after I got a rheumatic disease the doctor did't know nothing about. When I was 16 the disease started to move again and then I was put on a hospital specialized on rheumatic diseases. After 2 months there a doctor told me that I had got the disease Lupus which to me was unknown.
After graduated high school I started to work as a secretary here in Arendal where I was born. But after some years here I wanted to move to Oslo for more work there. So I got a job in a hospital in Oslo (Rikshospitalet). After a year I got very sick and this time by brain lupus got involved. I had to go true horrible treatment who should had been avoided had they known I had CNS Lupus. But I got well and started to work again. The summer of 1991 I traveled to the States to visit my sister who at that time lived and worked in Washington, Bethesda. She had got a scholarship to work in NIH. After two days in NY and some more days in Washington we took a flight to Utah where our Norwegian friend was study. There we drove from Utah down to San Diego, California. On the road down there we had stop at beautiful places like Bryce- and Grand Canyon. This trip was amazing, but unfortunately only one week after arriving home I got very sick in my lupus, also my hands hurt. So I had to go to the hospital, but the doctor there didn`t realize that my lupus was so affected as it was. He actually believed I had got some mosquito bite or something at my hand in the States. So I was put on Penicillin which didn`t help at all of course. When I came to the hospital my hands also was got affected and I know today that the name of them is Jaccoud`s Arthropathy. Obviously the rheumatologist didn't know anything about that lupus can affect your hands as well. After some days there I couldn't sleep at all and I started to react affected. So the doctor decided to put me at an psychiatry department. And once more I was wrong treated. This time I was not able to start work again cause of my bad hands. So I had to travel back home to my parents in Arendal. It has happened one more time that my lupus has been mistrust as a psychic disease, but that time finally a psychiatrist found out that I had a CNS Lupus or neuro Lupus. I was promised that I never should experience wrong treatment again.
In 1992 I took part in a conference about Lupus, the first conference arranged in Norway. There they decided to make a lupus group around the country. I was first a contact person in my county, but in 1996 I started our group - Agder Lupusgruppe av NRF. The first 10 years we had meetings twice a year with a lecture about an interested subject. But after we got the internet people was not so interested in our meetings anymore. We also use to have barbeque evening. But then we started to travel and we have been to: Skagen (Denmark), Gøtebog (Sweden), Reykjarvik (Iceland), Copenhagen (Demark), Stockholm (Sweden) Berlin (Germany) and also to different places in Denmark at the same vacation.
Lupus In Color is excited to present Trude's story to the world. As a Lupus Warrior she is actively promoting lupus awareness and wearing the armor of strength in doing so. Lupus In Color Salutes you Trude Wessel Thilesen.
YOUR BUTTERFLY WINGS ARE FLUTTERING, YOUR CHIN IS UP, YOUR ARMS ARE EXTENDED AND YOUR CHEST IS OUT! FLY ON BUTTERFLY! FLY ON!
PLEASE SHARE TRUDE'S FLIGHT ON YOUR WALL AND START HER BUTTERFLY JOURNEY SPREADING LUPUS AWARENESS!
Hugs to you and all of us that live with immune disorders.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Tina, hugs to you too <3
DeleteThank You Tina!
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