Hello, I am a twenty-six year old girl and about six years ago my legs and hands began to swell up. I also remember that I always felt cold. Then, while I was working one day I realized that some of my fingers had no sensation anymore. There were practically times when I had no sense of touch. Afterwards I learned to understand when this would happen: when I got excited, with temperature changes, but mostly when it turned cold.

I went to so many hospitals. They tried cortisone and antihistamines, but nothing worked. After some research, they diagnosed me with lupus. I took medicine, but nothing helped and the pain was getting worse.

This did not end until I met a girl from Rome who has the same illness, and she took me to her rheumatologist. I started to recover very fast, and now I go there every fifty days.

I can go forward thanks to treatment. Thanks to this center my illness, not lupus, has receded, although it is not gone completely, but at least now I can write and do things that I didn't think I would do anymore.

I read all the stories on sclero, and I thank God my organs haven't been touched. If I can say my own, I feel bad knowing that I also have it. But I keep on fighting because I have a will to live, so I say to everyone: don't give up, keep going.