Please visit Regan at www.BeatLupus.com and www.ReganMizuno.com (her musician site). Regan's goal is to help raise awareness about lupus for a cure through music and advocacy. Thank you for your support.
Holy Smokes. You know, I did not know that Michael Jackson had lupus. A friend of mine, Dr. Christine Dumas, recently pointed me to a press release by Dr. Deepak Chopra, who announced on June 27 that Michael had lupus.
I was shocked to learn this. And it’s funny – just one evening before learning this information (and after hearing some reported details of Michael’s passing), my mother was surmising that perhaps Michael Jackson had lupus. I considered that. He did, after all, have hair loss, he apparently suffered from fatigue and extreme pain, and it seemed as though his body and his organs simply gave out. “Nah,” I thought. It can’t be – he would have said, we would have known, etc.
And then I came to find out that is exactly what he had.
Knowing this, I now have to wonder, why didn’t he come out and say he had it? Well, it turns out he never really hid the fact he had lupus. I read a 2003 article about his presence at a lupus L.A. fundraiser and that the media had disclosed his lupus several years ago in many different publications.
But it never made headline news. Was the world not ready to hear it? Did we not understand (or care to understand) lupus? Did people brush it off or simply feel disbelief? Did we simply not know of the nature or gravity of lupus?
I think all these scenarios were present. Before I was diagnosed, I really didn’t know much about lupus either. And after I was diagnosed, I was in denial. Yikes!
Please see next article: Michael Jackson and Lupus: Part II.
copyright Regan Mizuno 2009, Harmonics Engineering Services, LLC, all rights reserved.
Regan is a singer/songwriter and lupus advocate. She holds a degree in mechanical engineering and is currently working on a book about lupus. You can contact her at www.BeatLupus.com and www.ReganMizuno.com (her music site). Regan's goal is to help raise awareness about lupus for a cure through music and advocacy. Thank you for your support.