I am sorry that what I wrote scared you. The entire conversation (conversation? Lecture!) involved "You are not going to get better." "It is palliative care." "It is a matter of quality of life." "It takes less medication to keep the pain down than to get it down." "Take the *&^% pills!" Another MD said, "You will out live several of your organs." (I found that one particularly jarring.) "Lupus is incurable." And, although I cannot recall the exact words, they said it will eventually kill me (which is implicit in the use of the word "palliative" anyway.)
My brother plans on attending my 100th birthday party (he will be 114 at that time) and I am aiming for 124 since I promised our PhD daughter that I would begin learnign Sanskrit when I turn 125 and I have a lifelong loathing of the Sanskrit language. :lol:
Recovering alcoholics consider themselves to have a fatal disease but that they can live in recovery. I see a parallel there.
Besides I have an anaphylactic allergy problem that gives me, if I am exposed to any fruit, "four minutes to permanent brain damage and ten minutes to death". So, as I see it, it is a horse race between SLE and the fatal allergy but I'll probably be hit by a speeding semi in my 125th year.
Mind you with how the last week or so has been I might go looking for a truck.

The upshot of it all is that I would rather live happily with the information and in reality than pretend things are better or worse than they are.
It is a good life. God hasn't let me down yet!
Don't be scared, be grateful. Things could be so much worse.:hehe:
(I have no idea what that smile face means but it seems appropriate.)
Douglas+