May is LUPUS Awareness Month

  

Ten important facts you may or may not know about Lupus:

1. There is no known cause and no known cure for Lupus.

2. Lupus is very difficult to diagnose and there is no ONE test which will give this specific diagnosis.

3. Many physicians and their staffs are uninformed as to symptoms, diagnosis, or treatment of Lupus.

3. Lupus now affects 1.5 million Americans.

4. Living with Lupus is often compared to having a recurring flu during a flare and a mild cold at other times, but it is always with the patient.

5. Lupus patients may not look sick at all, or they may suffer from skin rashes (particularly across the face, neck, and chest), severe puffiness and swelling, visible and audible shortness of breath, and stiff hesitant movements.

6. Lupus patients often suffer with severe fatigue, unexplained fevers, muscle and joint pains, hair loss, rashes, confusion and forgetfulness (called Lupus Fog), seizures, kidney failure, strokes, and heart and lung problems (particularly pericarditis or pleurisy).   

7. Depression and feelings of guilt are often prominent in Lupus patients due to required lifestyle changes and limitations as well as reactions to medications.

8. Lupus is a non-transmittable disease, although birth children may inherit the tendencies to develop the disease.

9. The current treatments for Lupus are anti-malaria drugs, steroids, or chemotherapy -- or the treatment of each symptom as it occurs, avoidance of ultra-violet light, less stress, and extra rest.

    10. With research and medical advancements, the life expectancy of someone diagnosed early with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus has increased from 3 years to an almost normal lifetime.

         PLEASE Become a

Put Social Media to Work for Lupus Awareness!
 

Display lupus awareness through your profile and timelines pictures!

Tell your friends on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) that May is Lupus Awareness Month and why lupus is a cruel mystery to you. Change your profile icon and timeline photo to a Lupus Awareness Month logo or banner. To download: select your favorite icon from the stock of images then right click and choose “Save Image as”. Don't forget the hashtags #lupus, #putonpurple, and #cruelmystery.

 

For more information on Lupus please visit any of these sites:

http://www.lupus.org 

http://www.lupusresearchinstitute.org/ 

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/lupus/DS00115 

 

 

 

 Thank you for visiting and for your continued kindnesses and support.

Adrian Scott and the Society of Vampires

The 'Society of Vampires' Series:

Available at major online book retailers

This series started out as just one novel: 'A Vampire's Tale.' I wanted to tell the story of how an ordinary man becomes a vampire, and wanted to tell it from his own perspective, so I wrote it in the first person. While writing it, I realized it would make a good series, and as I enjoy writing novels in series, I created the Society of Vampires, an organization based in Paris, France, in the 1840's, and headed by a vampire who was fourteen centuries old and had been the right-hand man of Attila the Hun.

To give vampires a more 'human,' less-villainous nature, I added a small daughter and then gave Lord Tarkus, the superior vampire, a grandfatherly aspect. Then I brought in the werewolves as the villains of the series, and again to give the series a more human feel, created the Romany (gypsy) people as the keepers of the secrets of combatting werewolves, which made them allies of the vampires.

This idea came from an old 1941 movie I saw many years ago entitled 'Wolfman' (I think), starring Lon Chaney. During the movie an old gypsy woman reveals that her own son had become a werewolf, and had to be killed as there was no cure. She recited a poem I believe was created for the movie that went: 

"Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers at night 
May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright."
That rhyme stuck in my mind all these years, and it was the reason I made the werewolves the villains; also, when you think about it, the vampire kills because he has to in order to live; on the other hand, the werewolf kills because he enjoys killing - he's a maddened, ravening beast.
 

Just released on Amazon.com

Then I had to figure out a way the vampires could kill to feed, yet still have a kindly (if one can use that word) aspect; so I came up with the idea of them only killing those who were a drain on society: the drunken wife-beaters, those who were old and would die of disease very shortly, those who had nothing more to live for.
That, basically, is the plot running through the eight 'Society of Vampires' novels I've written, followed by the five 'Nosferatu Australis' books (in which I moved the central characters to Australia), and the three 'Tarkusian Chronicles,' which detail Lord Tarkus' life, first as a mortal then as a vampire, from about 400AD to 1840. And that, in a rather large nutshell, is the series.

The 'Nosferatu Australis' series is still open-ended, so I can add more novels to them if they prove popular enough; and I have one volume of the 'Tarkusian Chronicles' to write to complete Lord Tarkus' life. Whether I write the fourth volume of the 'Chronicles' and whether I add to the 'Nosferatu Australis' series, my friends, is up to you: you may grow tired of my protagonist, Lord Tarkus, and the rest of the bunch, in which case I'll end the whole thing off. Or you may want more, in which case, there will be more to write.                          Adrian Scott

Check out my new website under construction at:
http://adrianscott.yolasite.com/ 

And visit my blog at
http://adrianscottma.wordpress.com/