- March 2, 2025
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When Palm Coast resident Amy Shields was diagnosed with lupus three years ago, she took strength from her two sons: Michael, now 8, and Nicholas, now 7.
“I got home from the doctors office and bawled my eyes out,” she said. “But then I looked at my kids and said, 'I can’t do this.' They’re what makes me fight. When I’m having a real bad day, I just look at them and it gives me strength.”
But dealing with the pain of the disease — the inflammation, the aches, the nausea — is only part of Shields' struggle.
Lupus causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue and can lead to other health problems, and it left Shields, who worked in the timeshare industry for more than 20 years, unable to work or support herself. Her medication and frequent doctor visits added up to more than $700 per month, she said.
Shields' friends have organized a fundraiser, scheduled for this Saturday, to help her pay medical expenses associated with the disease.
As lupus attacked her body, she developed other medical conditions, including autoimmune hepatitis and steroid-induced diabetes. Her doctors told her she’ll need a liver transplant. The steroids she takes for lupus caused her to gain weight.
“When you’re body goes through this change, you lose your hair, you lose your teeth,” she said. “I stare at the mirror and I look at it, and it takes me about 10 minutes to see me.”
She began avoiding people, hating the times she’d have to go to her sons’ schools for meeting.
“I wouldn’t let anyone come see me, “ she said. “I pretty much kept it to myself because I didn’t want a lot of people to know.”
Now Shields, 42, lives with her sister Michele Shields in Palm Coast and is on disability.
But everything changed, she said, after she let her friends know she was in trouble.
“It was like the floodgates opened,” she said. “I slowly started letting some of my closest friends in, then I realized I was being stupid all this time, hiding from everyone because I was embarrassed by it. I didn’t want to ask for help. I didn’t want to burden anyone.”
A group of Shields’ friends, some of whom she hadn’t seen since high school, helped her set up a website, www.lupusfight.com, to chronicle her struggle with the illness and raise money for treatments.
One started creating and selling T-shirts and donating the proceeds to her. Another made bracelets.
Another friend was Orlando resident Heidi HudaKoz, who helped raise money to give Shields and her children a trip to Disney World last Christmas.
“Everyone donated a little, so their Christmas was a little more cheery,” HudaKoz wrote in an email. “The more I found out about her story, the more I thought about what I could do.”
The fundraiser this weekend will help Shields pay for dental treatments associated with her illnesses.
That kind of goodwill from friends has helped Shields face days of pain and medical visits, where it always seems there’s more bad news.
“Years and years you don’t talk to (certain friends), and then they know you need them and they’re there,” she said. “It just makes you feel good about the world, that all this good is out there.”
The fundraiser Saturday will inlcude raffles, bingo and karaoke, and guests must register online at www.lupusfight.com/bingooke-fundraiser. Admission is $30 per person or $50 for guests who pre-register together. The event will begin at 6 p.m. at the Elks Lodge 1079, 12 N. Primrose Drive, in Orlando.
To donate online, visit www.lupusfight.com/donate/.
