A fragile thumbprint grates at the cogs of a translucent orange disposable lighter. Sparks

erupted eloquently around a sharp flame as it kisses the rolled bottom of a joint.

“Click-Phf,” is the distant hissing sound it makes when lit and with a sharp drag the

tobacco leaves appear naked as they change to ash. Bit by bit embers char the cocoon and build a

skeleton of dust that falls to the floor. With each inhale, the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) causes

an acute inflammation throughout her lungs that often leads to a mental and physical numbing

sensation. The smoker is Josephine Kahn, a sixty-eight year old grandmother, mother, and

woman who suffers from Lupus Erythematosus or just simply, Lupus. She smokes pot to lose

track of time and to no longer become limited to it.

Lupis is an autoimmune disease in which the human body becomes hyperactive and

becomes to attack normal, healthy tissue. Lupus suffers experience severe fatigue, joint pain, and

can easily be identified by an apparent facial rash that spreads from their nose and across their

cheeks—resembling a butterfly.  Patients of Lupus are also susceptible to other diseases because

their bodies can no longer fight off “foreign invaders” such as bacteria, germs, and viruses.

“If I could turn back time I’d want to have my hands back,” Josephine says as she stares

longingly at her fingers that now bend like vines tied to tree branches. “I’d like to make you

jewelry for your graduation. But they hurt so much, and the coils are too small. I feel like my

hands aren’t my own anymore.”

In her healthier days, Josephine was as craftswoman. She made her own jewelry with

stones, gems, and chains brought from wholesalers. She was a magician on the sewing machine.

“Pitter, patter, pitter patter,” is what her singer would say as it intricately motioned string into

fabric. And she was also an avid fan of the newest gaming consoles. Clothes to long? She could

fix them. House a bit too dirty? Her obsessive compulsive disorder made her want to clean it. In

need of a new pair of earrings for graduation? She found the perfect gems and fashioned them

into something unique.

“I played the game for an hour and a half today, that’s the longest I’ve played in a while.”

She says as she sets down her Xbox 360 controller. “I can’t play for too long now, it starts to

give me a fucking headache after a while and then my hands start to lock up. You don’t ever

want your fingers to get locked up. They get stuck. My middle finger once got locked up last

week for two and a half days.”

Josephine lives in a studio apartment on the top floor of a three story building in Jersey

City. The landlord of her apartment is not responsible for the heating system that makes her

apartment overwhelmingly hot, nor is he responsible for the black mold that keeps returning to

her bathroom. He likes to agree to disagree in most cases, and lies to her saying that things will

be fixed that never really are until all the nagging phone calls make him feel guilty. In this small

apartment Josephine has set up an assortment of things—when you first walk in there is a black

trunk on the left that houses all her jewelry and craft tools. Her small dining table comes right

after the trunk and it helps enclose her kitchen and medium-sized refrigerator (it’s about the size

of a small tree). And finally across from her trunk and kitchen is the bed that Josephine can

always be seen resting in. Accompanied by four cats and her eldest daughter, she lives what most

would say is a lonely life but she tries to make the best of it.

Her hands obviously do not work like they used to. And these days have become her

unhealthy days, her sad days, and her slow days. Within a matter of two years, she went from

being 150 lbs. to a mere 119 lbs. The sickness would get the best of her and slowly start to eat its

way through her. She now spends most of her time sitting up in bed and very seldom ever

walking. If she does walk it is because she took all her medication for the day and does not have

a raging headache. In the face of family and friends she will stand up and dance her way to her

kitchen. For most, from her kitchen to her bed it takes seven steps, for Josephine, even if she is

dancing, it might just take twenty.

“I’d like to believe that these doctors will get me better, but they just keep letting me

down,” Josephine says while rubbing her eye.

Nearly two months ago, a piece of cat hair was lost within Josephine’s eye. On a more

personal context, she has Dermatillomania- which is when a person obsessively picks at their

wounds. With the constant attacking and wiping of her eye and failed visited to an

ophthalmologist it now remains closed. At first glance you can see the black and blue bruising in

the corner of her eye, and at second glance, when helping with the application of medical eye

drops and holding open her eye, you will see extreme redness and signs of a growing cataract.

She is slowly going blind in her right eye.

“These doctors don’t know what they’re doing. How the fuck are they certified to help

people when they’re just helping them die?” Josephine says while trotting across her apartment,

her crippled hands tightly gripping a mug. She almost looks like a baby learning how to hold

things for the first time. “The last doctor I went to about my headaches gave me some medicine

that broke me out in rashes and then I started to get hives on my scalp. You don’t want to get old.

Getting old is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to accept. I just want to die sometimes.”

As of now, there are no clear identifies as to what causes Lupus and there are no cures.

Lupus can be managed through a series of treatments and medications but the patient can never

really return to normal. According to Medicinenet.com, “The environment, sunlight, stress, and

certain medicines may trigger symptoms in some people,” so even with the consumption of

medication on a daily basis, the patient may still have worsening results.

“I want to take her to Michigan just so she can get the medical attention she needs,” Her

daughter Alice Davis says as she takes a few bulbs of marijuana and put them into a grinder.

“She can get better but it’s just a matter of finding her people who know what they are

doing. These doctors in Jersey?” She paused as she liked a tobacco leaf with the now ground

substance.

“They could lose their ass if it weren’t attached to them. The doctors in Michigan? They

would be able to find out what is wrong with her in the matter of three days. They don’t stop

working,” She says as she begins to roll the joint and then gloss it with her tongue. “This is some

good shit; it’ll make her more at ease and more hungry. She’s gaining weight you know?”

And she is right. As the initial caretaker of Josephine, Alice has been taking great care of

her since she returned from Michigan about two years ago. Marijuana is the one thing in this

world that makes Josephine feel like she can move again without limitation. With the

combination of her daily medication as well as daily joints, her own joints feel as lucid as they

were before she got sick. The stress, pain, and ailments that she carries for most of the day seem

to vanish when she is inebriated.

“I feel younger, and I feel better after a while. And it definitely puts me in a better

mood,” She says while taking a drag on her joint. “One thing I could say about getting

old—don’t ever stop smiling or laughing. If you do, the depression takes over. Ever since I got

sick, I get depressed about a lot of things, things that I cannot control. The more I continue to

laugh and smile, the better I feel.”

While Josephine has found a temporary fix for her sickness, she admits that she won’t

give up so easily. She sees the future as a bright one, with good doctors and better medication

that might just help her on her endeavor to living an even longer and more fulfilling life.

“I’m not done in this world. There was a time when I thought I was, but I don’t believe

that so much anymore,” She said with a smile on her face and tear running from her eye. “It’s

been a long time coming but I finally accept where I am and I appreciate the world for what its

been to me.”