What Nobody Knew - Judy Radin

Joanna’s resumé was a lie. It had to be. She had to be able to explain where she’d been all these years. If she told the truth no one would hire her. If she told the truth she might not even get any interviews. That’s what her parents told her. “If you ever want to work again, Joanna, you’re going to have to cover up the last year.” Even her doctors agreed. So Joanna asked her friend Jerry to say she worked for him at his Berkeley start-up. Jerry agreed. It wasn’t a total lie. Joanna actually worked for Jerry before she got sick. She’d done all the things she said she’d done. She just didn’t do them last year.

Last year Joanna was in the hospital. Everyone thought she was going to die. Her case of lupus had been relatively mild until then, consisting of joint pain, skin rashes, and chronic fatigue. Then she got the flu and the flu made her immune system go haywire. Her t-cells started destroying her. They started her off on low doses of Prednisone, ten to twenty milligrams, but it wasn’t until the dose hit ninety milligrams that the drug started having an effect. So they pumped her body full of Prednisone and waited. After three weeks her platelets finally started to return to normal. She wasn’t going to die.

Prednisone saves lives, but it’s so toxic to the system that it took a year to get it completely out of her body. Joanna had all the nasty side-effects: swollen, distorted facial features, extreme weight gain in the upper body, and a beard and mustache. For a while she looked like hell. But now, a year later, she was herself again. You’d never know looking at her what she’d been through. She felt good too. She was back in Berkeley and she was in remission. She knew she wasn’t cured. She knew that any minute something could happen and she could be back in the hospital. But she couldn’t let anyone else know that, certainly not a potential employer.