West Virginia teacher Sierra Butler spent years of her life dealing with symptoms she couldn’t connect including fatigue, joint pain and weight loss. In 2020, she lost over 100 pounds — and the ability to walk.
Finally, she got a diagnosis: lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes pain and inflammation in the body.
In some people, lupus can affect the heart and cardiovascular system. That’s what happened to Butler: During the summer of 2020, she was in and out of the hospital, sometimes staying in the intensive care unit for days at a time. One night, she had an overwhelming sense of impending doom and called 911.
While hospitalized, she was tested for C-reactive protein, a blood marker that indicates inflammation. A healthy person will have a CRP level of 0.2 or 0.3. Butler’s level was over 100, and she was immediately admitted to the cardiac ICU that she had left just days before.
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