When Lupus Throws You for a Loop : A Handbook for the Newly Diagnosed, Lupus Veterans, and for Those Who Love Them

When Lupus Throws You for a Loop is a handbook for those newly diagnosed, lupus veterans, and those who love them. It takes you on a journey to acceptance acknowledging the difficulty of incorporating lupus into your life. You learn ways to communicate effectively, live with unpredictability, imperfection, stress, and loss of control. You learn to read your body’s signals, enhance your relationships regarding intimacy, and increase your positivity and resilience. The book explores the various types of impact lupus has on adolescents and adults as well as the relationships of your significant others. You learn to feel confidant, proud, strong and empowered. You learn what it is to be a true warrior of lupus.

One year after being diagnosed with lupus, the author earned a master’s degree in social work. Rather than focus on the negativity of her diagnosis, Donna Oram decided to volunteer and work in the lupus community for twenty-plus years mentoring positive attitudinal changes. The book is interspersed with personal and professional experiences Donna encountered. Her vast knowledge, insight, and empathy for those who have lupus and those who love them guided her desire to help. She has “walked the walk.”

At the age of forty-five, Donna B. Oram, MSW, ACSW, decided to return to school and earn a master's degree in social work. Halfway through, she applied for a summer job and flunked the required physical. Ten days later, she was told by a rheumatologist who remains her doctor to this day, "You have lupus."

Donna graduated with a social work degree the following year and worked twenty-four years as a hospital social worker. While she loved her job, Donna wanted more. She made a decision to take her negative feelings about lupus, change them into positive ones, and help others who also had the disease.

Donna became involved with the lupus community by volunteering and working twenty-plus years for Michigan Lupus Foundation. She used her social work training, her experience, and her positivity to help people with lupus cope. Donna is now retired and lives with her husband in a Detroit suburb. Her children and grandchildren live nearby.