Past Secrets for the Future of Lupus

“Come on,” Dr. D. persisted, looking at his colleague. “It’s not bad.”

Secrets are always problematic because, even if trivial, their hidden nature cries for discovery, an effort to crack the code or lift away the rock from the dark and mysterious overgrowth covering a path to the past.

My mind began to spin about the possibilities for Dr. M.’s secret, although figuring out what she had done in the past was not all that difficult. One look at her would give the answer. Dear readers, we have a matter of some caution and delicateness here since any description of this woman that I would provide could be subject to misinterpretation, implying that I was paying undue attention to her appearance or, egads, noticing her body. Friends, I am a doctor. I am allowed, encouraged, and required to look at people’s bodies. It is a habit that is hard to break or segregate into work hours. I am also a writer, and writers have to describe the people in their chronicles.

Suffice it to say, Dr. M. appeared in no acute distress, looked younger than her stated age, and her head was normocephalic and atraumatic. By inspection, there were no obvious deformities of the extremities and, when I had observed her walking to the microphone to ask a question at the meeting, it appeared that her strength and gait were intact. I could say that she moved with agility and grace, with a quick, sprightly, and decisive step. If I said that she was lithe or lissome, I would probably get in trouble. (As a disclaimer, lithe and lissome were not my idea. They came from the thesaurus. Shift F7 made me do it.)

No doubt, Dr. M. had once been an athlete of some kind, although given the context of the discussion—the idea that past athletic accomplishment was worthy of secrecy—I could not help but wonder about something more unconventional, colorful, or exotic: a runway model, a stunt woman, or a dancer at the Tenderloin.

Or maybe Dr. M. was the girlfriend of a mobster who had turned state’s evidence, conveniently and cleverly stashed by the FBI in a witness protection program and assigned to a new identity—academic rheumatologist! Trust me, no mobster on the lookout for a stool pigeon would expect to find his quarry hiding in a rheumatology clinic filling out the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics damage index. She would have been assured years of safety in such an employ.

Lupus investigators are a passionate and often strong-willed lot. Meetings on lupus can be intense occasions, filled with opinion, argument, and contention. They are definitely more exhausting than meetings on other diseases.

A Truth Less Strange than Fiction

As it turns out, Dr. M.’s secret past was no big deal and, with a little prodding from Dr. D., she told us her story. As a teen, she had been a top junior tennis player, ranked in the top 10 in her state. During one tournament, her opponent had been someone who became a big-time player whose name once filled the sports pages. Alas, Dr. M. suffered defeat at the hands of the future pro, a baseline basher with bruising groundstrokes.