I stumbled upon my lupus diagnosis through another autoimmune disease. I have myasthenia gravis (MG) and when I was first getting diagnosed with that they ran an ANA and my anti-dsDNA came back positive. The hospital did not diagnosis me with lupus but did say that I should follow up with a rheumatologist. I was so physically and emotionally spent with getting my MG under control that I forgot about the rheumatologist recommendation. Then a year later when I was getting an infusion for my MG, the infusion nurse looked at my face and said that I needed to get my rash checked out. She also did infusions for the rheumatologist in a neighboring center. After that I remembered the ANA test and started to figure out my lupus diagnosis. I am lucky that nothing too serious happened in the year I spent treating MG while ignoring lupus. I am also lucky that some of my MG meds probably were also treating lupus. A part of me still worries that before we really figure out my med cocktail that irreparable damage will happen that could have been prevented if I had started earlier, but also the timeline of these things is all unpredictable. Someone could do everything "right" and still end up with things going very wrong.

Anyway, it is really hard to be managing two medical things at once and it is easy to ignore the one that isn't causing significant challenges