This week I found a magazine which sported a picture of Selena on the cover with the title: Selena’s Rehab Nightmare.  On reading the article, the magazine informs that the real cause of Selena interrumpting her tour was a problem with alcohol and depression resulting from her breakup with Justin Bieber, and not becuase of the efects of lupus.  While I do not know Selena personally and therefore cannot comment on how much she was affected by her breakup with Bieber, I do know that Lupus causes many emotional outbursts and it’s very clear in the article that it is a little understood illness.

  Even if tabloids refuse to believe it, having lupus is not only a physical situation, it affects the whole person, since it affects all the systems in the body.  Everybody I know that has this illness, me included, has been through periods of depression and severe anxiety.  Mediacally no link has been established between the acting up of the immune system and the emotional state of the person, however, it happens.  The emotional aspect of this illness is among the hardest to understand, since it someimes resembles a roller coaster of different and warring emotions.  We can be perfectly happy and suddenly break down in tears at the least provocation, or have an uncontrololable anger attack for something apparently trivial.

  We are not crazy or unstable, but in my opinion, the ill feeling and exhaustion that the condition brings afects our emotional state as well.  It seems like the obstacles and challenges that a healthy person perceives as inconsequential, for us can seem insurmountable and terrifying.  It maskes us more sensitive to everything, undoubtedly.  It’s not easy to explain this apparent instability to someone who has never felt it, as it’s made so clear by the article on Selena.  Maybe, with more talk about lupus now that someone famous has it, we can educate people more on all the effects this illness has on our whole beings.