Living with an invisible disease

Women with autoimmune conditions face a host of challenging symptoms, even judgment from outsiders as their suffering is not obvious to others

- Stephanie Yeo

Senior Correspondent Ms Bertilla Wong was in Secondary 3 in 2005 when she suddenly developed rashes on her feet. She would also get breathless after climbing two flights of stairs when she usually had no problems walking up four storeys to her classroom at Nanyang Girls' High School.

She sought help from a general practitioner who found that she was anaemic. Then just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, commonly referred to as lupus, which affected her heart and lungs, and required two weeks of hospitalisation. Lupus' symptoms include joint pain, fatigue and a butterfly rash that appears across the cheeks and nose.

"I think what triggered my lupus was stress because I was juggling many things. I was in the student council, I played table tennis, and I had dance and piano lessons and third-language classes," says Ms Wong, 35, co-founder of home-grown fashion brand The Closet Lover.

She dropped all her co-curricular activities and focused on recuperating. In the two decades she has been a lupus patient, she has had one or two major flare-ups requiring a higher dose of medication and more rest. She is on several types of medicines, most of which she has taken for 20 years.

"If I get a small flare-up, like joint pain, then I'll rest. I'm really quite lucky," says Ms Wong, who has two sons aged three and four.

She is one of many women here suffering from autoimmune conditions, where the body's immune system, which is supposed to protect, attacks healthy cells instead.

One in 10 people have autoimmune disorders and women make up the majority of such patients. Scientists suspect that sex hormones play a part.