After years of just ‘running, running,’ a crisis led to a lupus diagnosis. Now she connects others
Teenagers don’t get arthritis. That’s what Tiffany Peterson kept hearing as that dreadful feeling in her 17-year-old wrists and knees grew excruciating. So she tried to ignore it, popping over-the-counter pain medicines and keeping her head in science textbooks, her hands full in the evening with extracurriculars and a half dozen younger siblings to care for. Then came the hair loss, and a menstrual cycle gone haywire: bleeding three months straight.
This was not normal. But without health insurance, and at a time when online health information wasn’t easily found — Google was only 4 years old — Peterson was left wondering for years what was the matter. It took a breaking point in college for her to marshal the resources to get care and a diagnosis: lupus, a disease she knew little about, and nobody with.
