Saw my longtime rheumatologist a few days ago for the first time in two years. He ordered a CBC (complete blood count) to check on things.

I got a note back, and you could just hear the wonder in his voice as he typed out the words:

After all these years, for the first time, the ANA is negative.

That would be anti-nuclear antibodies, ie antibodies to the nuclei of my own cells, a hallmark of lupus. That doesn’t mean I’m cured. My eyes are fiercely reactive to the summer sun.

But some inner part of me took a deep breath and, surely echoing my doctor as he stared at that computer screen in delighted disbelief, at long, long last, exhaled.

—

(Edited to add, my Crohn’s was, at biopsy, always a subset of the lupus, so I think we’re two for one on this.)