Lil Chapin Battle with Lupus

My wife, Lil Chapin got diagnosed with Lupus Nephritis back in 2015. Not knowing that this disease would cause such a stressful, painful both emotionally and physically, and traumatic years to come. After being diagnosed with Lupus, Lil has had to be put on several medications to control her disease. For those of you who do not know, Lupus Nephritis is an autoimmune disease, which causes the swelling of the kidneys, and with Lupus the body's immune system attacks it's own body tissue. This has caused my wife to have painful issues with water retention, joint pain, high blood pressure, high heart rate, nausea, vomiting, migraines and much more. Lil's situation was attempted to be treated by medication, a lot of them, and went through months on 15+ medications taken per day. Though this never really helped anything but caused her more issues. After a few years of attempting to fix and control this disease through meds, it was determined that her kidneys were on "overdrive" and presumed to not be allowing any of these medications to work. From there, she was out through Chemotherapy to shut down her immune system and kidneys to maybe be able to give her medications a chance to work. As you can imagine, during the time of treatment was miserable. Lil was rarely able to hold any type of food down. Crackers and water even became difficult. After months of treatment, she was finally announced to be in remission, but that did not last very long. A short time later, her symptoms came back and they came back strong. Lil was in and out of the hospital almost monthly for a year. Constant Lupus flares that would cause Pericarditis, which is the simplified as the swelling of the lungs causing shortness of breath, dizziness and vomiting to say the least. She became unable to tolerate almost any food and has struggled with that for years now.

Moving up closer to our current date, Lil was out on the kidney transplant list back in November. The reason for this is because even though we were finally able to get her Lupus under control, the Lupus had already done its damage to the kidneys which started so much more issues than expected. Lil's kidney function has steadily been dropping for months now and has recently been told to be at about a 12-16% functionality rating. Due to this, she was also sent to be put on Hemodialysis immediately. After getting the catheter placed in her chest, exactly one week later they placed the PD catheter in her abdomen which is to be used for "Home Dialysis". She had to use the Hemodialysis catheter for about 1 month while the PD catheter healed up. Therefore, she was going to a clinic in Mechanicsville every other day to be treated. After finally transferring over to PD catheter where she could do dialysis at home while she slept, this became a struggle as well. Lil is such a small woman due to having such a difficult time eating and holding down any food at all that the Dyalisis has become too hard on her. Now we are back at square one, going in to get the Hemodialysis catheter put back in this upcoming Monday. Hopefully this all will come to an end in the near future with her finally getting a donor to give her a healthy kidney, but we have no idea how long that will be until it happens, as we have already had one man try and become disqualified due to health concerns.

What I have explained to you is the the basis of this journey and what my wife has gone through. We do not like to ask anybody for any type of help, but sometimes you get to the point where you need to ask. As you can imagine, the doctors bill's, ER visits, hospital stays, treatments, medications. time off work for both her and I have caught up to us quite badly and still have such a long road ahead of us. We are asking for any possible help you are able to give and if you are unable, a simple share of this story would do just great.

If you know Lil, you know she is one of the most pleasant and down to earth people on this planet. She would do absolutely anything for anybody she knows and loves, can always make someone else smile and can brighten up anyone darkened day, despite her own difficult situation. Lil deserves to have the life she has so wrongfully had taken from her from this awful disease called Lupus, and I will continue to do everything I can to give it to her. I thank you to all who have helped, supported and kept in touch with us in the past through all these difficult times.