A nurse says she feared she was ‘going crazy’ after medics struggled to diagnose a serious autoimmune disease.

Yvonne Davis, who works at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, began to worry she was imagining her symptoms when test after test came back clear.

With high fevers and pains in her joints and muscles, Ms Davis said that her life pre-diagnosis was "hell".

She said: "I was having flare-ups and thinking ‘am I going mad, am I imagining things?’ But I was not imagining having a temperature of 40 degrees, and I was not imagining the pain.

“I had bone marrow biopsies, a lymph node biopsy, and every single blood test under the sun and it all came back negative.”

After being referred to a specialist, the ITU nurse was finally diagnosed with Lupus, a condition where the immune system attacks healthy parts of the body.

Although the condition is incurable, it can be treated to manage flare-ups, and Ms Davis said that it was a relief to finally have an answer.

"To understand I was not going crazy – that was such a relief"

She said: “To be told it was lupus; to have a diagnosis and to understand I was not going crazy – that was such a relief.

“Lupus cannot be cured but I’m living with it and there are treatments.

“At least I know what I am dealing with now. I do still have flare-ups but I still go to work unless I physically can’t get out of bed.

“As an ITU nurse I think you are harder on yourself, because you see people in the unit and they are sick, really sick.

“So if I have a headache or I feel tired – I’m going to work through that because compared to my patients I’m fine.”

October is Lupus Awareness Month, which aims to raise awareness of the condition.

The disease, which is not contagious, is more common in women than men, with Black and Asian women being more susceptible.

The symptoms include joint and muscle pain extreme tiredness, rashes – often over the nose and cheeks, headaches, mouth sores, a high temperature, hair loss and sensitivity to light.

It is easier to manage if it is caught early, but diagnosis can be difficult because the symptoms are similar to those of other conditions.

For more information on lupus visit www.lupusuk.org.uk

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