IT’S 2023. Tinesha Gonzales-Gordon Woods is hospitalised. Her body feels so weak and her frame has become so frail that she does not think she’s going to survive. Her diagnosis? Lupus nepritis.

She prays, she cries, and she prays again. And she survives.

Today, she recounts that very triumph as she raises awareness about the chronic disease and supports others who are living with it.

Gonzales-Gordon Woods, 29, hails from Trincity.

In contrast to the public-facing, outgoing person she has become, she said she was “very quiet and reserved.”

Her experiences over the past two years brought about this change.

In an interview on May 8, she told WMN that in 2023, she caught a cold that did not seem to be going away.

“And then I started to look different…My feet started to swell, my legs were swelling.”

But she chalked it up to her just “being really sick” so she “didn’t really take it on.

[caption id="attachment_1154463" align="alignnone" width="488"] Tinesha Gonzales-Gordon Woods in 2023 when she was diagnosed with lupus. -[/caption]

“But my mum was a bit concerned because I was just sleeping all day. I was really tired and weak, marks started to come up on my arms, and I thought I just got bitten by a mosquito or something. But then the rash started on my face.”

She said one of her aunts told her the symptoms she had sounded like lupus.

“I was like, ‘No way’ because everything that I’ve heard about lupus is that people die from it. So I was like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t have that. I don’t have that.’”

She visited a private doctor for a check-up, which included a blood test.

The results showed she had a lot of inflammation in her body.

[caption id="attachment_1154464" align="alignnone" width="576"] Tinesha Gonzales-Gordon Woods in 2023 when she was diagnosed with lupus. -[/caption]

She was advised to use some medication but did not feel any better. In fact, she said, she felt worse.

“My mother knew somebody who was at San Fernando General Hospital and called them. Then she said, ‘Pack your things. We are going to the hospital.’”

‘You look like you’re about to die’

She did not get many positive remarks about how she was looking at the time.

“I was looking like I was about to die. That’s how everybody explained it to me. They (my family) all said, ‘Something is definitely wrong.’”

Asked if she agreed with them, she said she was avoiding looking at her reflection.

“ I became very unrecognisable to myself. It was hard to look at myself in the mirror.”

She added, “My now husband and boyfriend at the time (Jameké Gordon Woods) still used to reassure me: I see you for you.”

[caption id="attachment_1154382" align="alignnone" width="488"] Tinesha Gonzales-Gordon Woods in 2023 when she was diagnosed with lupus. -[/caption]

She said the doctor at the hospital “kind of already knew what was going on” just by looking at her. And after all the tests, it was confirmed that she had lupus nephritis.

Lupus nephritis is the inflammation of the kidneys owing to lupus.

Lupus is a chronic,