Lola, age 14, came to see me distressed about her hair loss. She had lost some 40 percent of her hair over the preceding year. She was also suffering from severe, debilitating headaches and had been seen in the pediatric migraine clinic at her local hospital. Even the strongest migraine-specific painkillers didn't help much, and Lola had taken a great deal of time off school, needing to lie down in a darkened room for days on end.
For the hair loss, Lola had been referred to the pediatric dermatology clinic, where the doctors— correctly—suspected autoimmunity. They referred her to the Pediatric Rheumatology department, where the doctors initially said she had the autoimmune disease SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus, also known as lupus),
