This Dairy Farmer Was Misdiagnosed with Lyme Disease for Years. It Was Lupus

When dairy farmer Brie Hyde began experiencing chronic fatigue and joint pain, doctors treated her for Lyme disease. After years of worsening symptoms, she was diagnosed with Lupus. Photography courtesy of Brie Hyde As a child, Brie Hyde dreamed of being a veterinarian. “I’ve always been an outdoorsy person, very animal fascinated,” she told Healthline. While attending the University of Vermont, she fell in love with dairy farming and started her own farm in Connecticut in 2004. “I was a first-generation female farmer,” she said. “Farming is crazy active and very strenuous on your body and time, and that’s what completed me. That’s what makes me whole.” However, early on during her farming days, she began experiencing intense hand pain that she initially attributed to the physical demands of her job. “There’s pictures and videos and things that I look back at now, and I was constantly rubbing my hands,” said Hyde. The pain eventually spread to her feet, ankles, knees, and hips, and during the summertime, she developed fevers. At first, doctors attributed her symptoms to Lyme disease, a bacterial infection transmitted from ticks. “So they’d put me on prednisone and antibiotics, and 10 days on prednisone, you’re feeling better. So then it would go away, and I would push through,” she said. Signs and symptoms that lead to a lupus diagnosis Hyde’s symptoms persisted and progressed. “I’d be in the shower, and my feet would be purple,” she said. She also noticed a lacy pattern appearing under her skin and a strange reaction to sunlight. “I would go out in the sun, and it would feel like I was burning from the outside in,” said Hyde. She also experienced extreme fatigue. “The crazy fatigue that I was getting and the pain in my hands had gotten to the point where I was like, ‘This is not right. There’s something not right,’” she said. She went back to her primary care physician, who ordered blood tests. Her doctor noticed Hyde had a high Antinuclear Antibody (ANA) test resu