Who knew about lupus? I sure didn't!

Guess what fun fact I just learned? Q-tips aren't supposed to be flushed down the toilet.

That's right - I had no idea those cottony little sticks could wreak so much havoc in the inner sanctums of the toilet bowl. Thankfully, it wasn't a plumbing issue that turned me on to this fact - just an older sister who gasped in horror as she saw me toss one into the toilet a few days ago. I don't know how or why I'd never learned proper Q-tip disposal techniques growing up, but somehow I'd missed the tutorial. Thank goodness Katie enlightened me. (What are older sisters for, if not to set us on the path of toilet bowl bliss ?)

I'm always amazed when I learn little facts like this - tidbits that it seems everyone knows but me (and Johnny). And based upon the 159,000 results I got when I googled it, it seems like flushing the ole' Q-tip gets plenty of air time. Apparently, it's quite the topic of conversation. Who knew I was missing out?

Interested to hear another tidbit that somehow passed me by during the past 35 years? I never knew until Deirdre was about 9 months old that baby bottles come with three (sometimes four) different nipple sizes that you are supposed to change throughout that first year of the baby's life.

Really? You are?

I had no idea that this was the case until one of Deirdre's bottles got mixed up with her cousin's of the same age. Her cousin, of course, was on to size #3...and I still had Deirdre using #1's. And no - she wasn't sucking the bottle so hard that she turned blue when she ate, nor were her lips permanently puckered, thank you very much. In fact, she seemed quite content using the same size nipple she did when she came home from the hospital. That said, she did seem to adjust quite well when I swapped out the nipples, downing a bottle within a few minutes, rather than the 15 minutes it was taking her. (Hey - I thought it was nice together-time.)

The fact is - there are normal, everyday things that occur in this world that you really don't know until someone tells you. Maybe q-tip and bottle etiquette aren't on your list of "a-ha's", but I bet there is something.

For me, there was another big "something" that I didn't know about - and that was what it was like to live with lupus. Heck - I didn't even know what lupus really was. And from what I hear from lupites around the world, that's pretty typical. One day, we don't even know what the disease is, and the next day, we find out that we have it, it's chronic, and we're going to have learn to deal with it for the rest of our lives.

And learning to deal with it...wow. That's a tall order. And that's why I wrote my book, and why I keep this blog. I want the shock factor of living with lupus to be minimized. I want people to know that yes, your life will change with lupus, and yes, it can really stink to make those adjustments in order to accommodate your illness, but living with lupus is manageable. It requires a strategy, and some patience, and perhaps a little creativity and out-of-the box thinking. But manageable? Oh yeah. Without a doubt.

As manageable as remembering not to flush your Q-tips? Well, now...that's debatable.