My take on the Royal Pains Lupus Story Line

I am a big fan of the show "Royal Pains" on the USA Network. I was behind a couple of weeks when the show aired where the character with Lupus died, but I saw many posts from others in the Lupus community that were upset that they had shown a character with Lupus die. So here is my take:

As I watched the show (the story line was approx 5 episodes long), I was happy to see a Lupus story line that didn't use Lupus as a joke or something that was so mysterious they only explained it with severe exhaustion and a rash across the face.


I watched as the character heard the news, and dismissed it as if it was nothing. It was interesting to watch as it went through the episodes where he didn't really listen to his doctors, or ignored the care his friends wanted to give him. We have all been there, right? We get the news that we have this disease and we say that we can ignore it. We see our friends start to look at us differently and we tell them that we are fine when we aren't. We ignore the treatment our doctor is suggesting because it isn't really that bad.

I will admit that when the character died, I cried. It was so hard to watch. To sit and think "I have what he has". But I am glad that USA chose to show a side of Lupus that many other platforms don't. Yes the majority of Lupus patients will die of a Lupus complication. Yes, we will be hospitalized at some point. So let's show the world. If we are going to raise awareness let's do it right. I really think House has played a worse roll in raising awareness for Lupus than Royal pains did.

I will also admit that I laid awake for a long time afterwards disturbed by what I saw. My husband was with me as we watched it and he was really a rock for me at that point.

Sometimes reality is hard, but you know what, it's reality. And if we don't face what is ahead of us our lives maybe drastically changed because we didn't plan ahead (Or do that treatment we weren't prepaired to accept).