In 1995, my friend Siri Lowe, who has died of cancer aged 68, was afflicted with the auto-immune skin disease pemphigus vulgaris, which forced her to take early retirement and changed the course of her life. Siri assiduously studied the disease, its symptoms and the immuno-suppressant drugs that were customarily prescribed to put the blistering it caused into remission, and set up a pemphigus support network.
She collected, collated, wrote and edited material for the support group’s website and also offered information over the phone every weekday morning. Overturning initial scepticism from medical experts, she won professional recognition, including the praise of the British Association of Dermatologists, for her accuracy and thoroughness. Anthony du Vivier, her consultant at the dermatology clinic of King’s College hospital, in south-east London, became one of her greatest supporters. Siri attended meetings of the parliamentary all-party skin care committee and the British Association of Dermatologists. Her greatest triumph came in organising a conference in London in 2000 for pemphigus patients, bringing together sufferers of this very rare, debilitating and potentially fatal disease, and thus ending their isolation.
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