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<\/p>\nAt Jacksonville’s Walk to End Lupus Now, survivors like Jennette Eggen shared their profound stories of resilience, raising awareness & community support for lupus.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 People living with lupus and their supporters came together at the University of North Florida Saturday morning for the 11th annual Walk to End Lupus Now.<\/p>\n
The event brought together lupus warriors, families and community members to raise awareness about the disease and show support for those living with it.<\/p>\n
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For Jennette Eggen, lupus has been part of her life for two decades, and the disease has affected generations of her family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI woke up one day, everything was in pain and I had no idea,\u201d said Eggen. “I felt like I was hit by a train. It was like it was really bad within a week. All my joints locked up. Everything was inflamed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eggen said she was diagnosed with lupus 20 years ago. She says her parents also lived with the disease, and her grandmother died from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to the doctor, I was one of the very few who was diagnosed with lupus right away,\u201d said Eggen. \u201cMost people take seven years to diagnose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eggen said the disease eventually affected her heart when she was 28 years old. She underwent open-heart surgery and said doctors were not sure if she would survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here 20 years later, celebrating this October, my 20 years past open-heart surgery,\u201d said Eggen. \u201cThey didn\u2019t think I\u2019d make it past 10, but over the years it\u2019s been really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the challenges, Eggen returned to the Walk to End Lupus Now as one of many people showing support for the lupus community.<\/p>\n
For another Jacksonville woman, Saturday marked her first time participating in the walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not an easy journey; it is painful,\u201d said Jennette Akins-Jones.<\/p>\n
She said events like the walk are important because they remind people living with lupus that they are not alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn event like this gets the message out and lets people know that there is support out there for you,\u201d said Jennette Akins-Jones. \u201cAnybody with lupus, unless you know the comorbidities that come with it, along with lupus and in the African-American culture, it really sends a message that there is support for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Walk to End Lupus Now raises awareness and support for people living with lupus while bringing the community together around the disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Jacksonville’s Walk to End Lupus Now, survivors like Jennette Eggen shared their profound stories of resilience, raising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-417997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}