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When Talaya Reid was in high school, in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia, she developed fatigue so severe that she spent afternoons napping instead of going out with friends. She was lethargic at school and her grades suffered, but after graduation she enrolled in community college, where she did well enough to transfer to Temple University. Then, in the summer of 2017, when Reid was twenty-one, she noticed a rash on her face after a day at the beach. Her doctor dismissed it as nothing serious. The rash persisted, so she sought care from a dermatologist, who raised a more ominous possibility: lupus, a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the skin, joints, and internal organs. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis.
Reid didn’t notice any other symptoms until, a few months later, she awoke with a searing pain in her abdomen. She drove to the E.R., where doctors found protein in her urine—a sign that lupus was affecting her kidneys. She spent eleven days in the hospital being pumped full of medications; by the time she was ready...