Pediatrician Margo McSwain has had a long — sometimes agonizing — journey through the difficult complications and symptoms of systemic lupus. After years of serious medical issues, McSwain received her diagnosis in 2002. Dangerous complications of the disease, which causes the patient’s immune system to attack tissue throughout the body, had sent McSwain to the hospital more than once.

In 2004, her lupus flared once again and she was ultimately hospitalized with acute renal failure and fluid in her lungs that restricted her breathing. McSwain came to NRH for inpatient rehabilitation to learn to walk and talk all over again.

“I had to re-teach my brain to find the right words,” McSwain says. “And my therapist was wonderful. She taught me skills and how to use techniques for word recall. All of the care at NRH was compassionate and top rate. My father was a patient there as well after an accident and he had loved everyone at NRH too.”

Today, McSwain is back to work as a pediatric consultant, raising her two teenage sons, and daily dealing with a chronic disease with no cure.