THE STORY BETWEEN THE SHEEP AND THE WOLF

- abril 07, 2019

“I was afraid, sad, and frustrated. I had sorrow on my soul, and I wanted to die”, confessed Vanessa, knows as well as “la del trébol”, a talented graphic designer and cartoonist girl from Peru. Remembering this episode of her life means bringing back good and bad moments. The 23^rd February 2018 she was interned in hospital for the first time: “That day I had bone pain, my eyes got full of red veins and I had constant vomits”. She had a lot of pain in her chest on breathing as well. She was conducted immediately to the UCI (Intensive Care Unit) and the doctor made her mom sign the informed consent document to proceed with the examination of her daughter. During the five days that she stayed in the UCI she developed also other symptoms: “I had skin rash and sores in my mouth, and a sudden and unexplained swelling in my body”. She got 85kg from her 52kg normal weight. After lots of urine and blood tests and a kidney biopsy, the doctor determined that she had lupus erythematosus nephritis, a medical name for kidney swelling and irritation caused by lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes our immune system to attack our own healthy cells. Her immune system was attacking her kidneys that got damaged, so they stopped working well. Part of her recovery consisted on dealing with dialysis, corticosteroids and immunosuppressive medication taken through her vein by chemotherapy. She got released from hospital the 04 April 2018. She spent even her 24^th birthday in a dark room of the hospital, watching her days as she was inside of a glass of cold water: “Thanks to God my kidneys were responding little by little, but my body was still swollen, and I had almost lost all my hair because of the chemotherapy”. Once at home she could be on bed keeping ahead the therapy and prescriptions from the doctor. Suddenly, after one month of being at home, she got a urinary infection and she was interned again in hospital for 15 days of a second medication treatment. The lupus symptoms may come and go at different times during the disease. By the 6^th August 2018 she got her last chemotherapy, but she was very upset as she saw her body on the mirror: “I had lost my hair, I had spots on the skin, and I was very slim”. During her recovery in hospital and at home she used to draw and paint in a little notebook that her mother had bought for her. She spent long days writing also some phrases or a sentence from her best songs: “No existe el amor cuando le buscas fuera de ti”, from León Larregui, “Souvenir”. One day, while she was drawing at her room and listening to music, her mom announced that there had just been reported five new cases of lupus from young women in hospital. Since that day she wanted to know more about this disease. She started to do her own researches on Internet and write down about her personal experience (treatment, recovery and care), so she can help these new patients and future ones about how to live with lupus. She had experienced pain, darkness and frustration; especially at the beginning of the symptoms because nobody knew what it was exactly. She thinks there was a lack of information, sensibilization, and understanding from some members of her family and even from some personal in the hospital: “When the first symptoms appeared in July 2017, in the hospital they thought I had helicobacter pillory and they prescribed some antibiotics for a week, but I continued having the symptoms. I remember clearly the nurse’s voice saying that I needed to visit a psychology because I didn’t have anything, she said that it was all mental”. As a result of that, she created her own site blog and a Fanpage named: “Viviendo con el lobo”, where now she shares all kind of information using all kind of multimedia supports to talk about lupus and some tips to think and eat healthy, too. It was precisely in her Fanpage where she published for the first time her own drawings and inspiring phrases under the name of “Obejota”. Nowadays, Obejota is the name of her own brand of personalized people’s cartoons through her Instagram and Facebook account; where she has just launched to her followers some affordable and personalized advertising buttons (1$05 dollars). Her next project is to build her own boutique or store in the city center where she lives, so she can sell her own brand of clothing and jewelry for teenagers’ women. Although she knows that lupus is going to live with her for a while, because there is no cure, she is confident that there is a lot that patients can do to manage the disease and improve their quality of life. She has accepted a very good relationship between her or “the great sheep” and lupus or “Mr., the wolf”. She has understood that is she the one who needs to take care of that relationship between her and her wolf inside.