The Life of a Werewolf

By Alia Gilbert

“Hey, Keith. It’s a full moon tonight. Don’t kill me.”

It’s another party at 1193, the main apartment where BU’s Stage Troupe ragers are hosted. It’s incredibly crowded, as usual. Crowded with an energetic, spontaneous, vociferous group of actors and techies dancing and laughing the night away. An explosive and potentially lethal combination—but it works. It’s the after party for one of the main stage shows, and the cast is celebrating another successful production.

And tonight, there’s a full moon.

Keith Gildea stands amid the people he sees on a regular basis; he’s used to this crowd invading his apartment. The sign on his bedroom door reads, “Out of Order, Bitches,” but everyone knows that the bathrooms are on the other side of the hall. Nevertheless, the door stays closed. Most of the night. Only the select few get to see the inside of the film major’s lair, littered with DVDs, scraps of paper, and his films’ paraphernalia.

Jason, Keith’s best friend since kindergarten, is visiting from Boston College, and the two laugh at Fritz’s predictable comment.

“It’s okay—I took the meds today. Wait—no…I can feel it coming…” Keith twitches his body violently and scrunches his face, then shakes himself back into his normal sturdy stance. “Never mind. False alarm.”

“Keith—stop with the excuses. Just turn into a goddamn werewolf.”

“Watch out—I might.”

Keith’s a strapping guy. On the short side, but stocky and well built. Black hair and the unmistakable white skin and transparent eyes of an Irish boy. He’s wearing his worn brown leather jacket from Australia, as usual. And, as usual, he’s got a cup full of pure Grade-A water in his hand.

“Keith, how drunk are you?” Sam yells above the blasting speakers.

“Damnit, I’m so wasted right now.” Keith laughs as he takes another sip of water and salutes the guy across the room. With an addicting smile spread across his face, he continues to mingle. He’s a werewolf with charm and plenty of game.

When you look at the straight facts, it is easy to see why the full moon tonight is a legitimate cause for concern. Keith sheds like a dog. A lot. And he has to be careful about who he gets near to; however, it’s for his own protection, more than anything. Despite his strapping appearance, his body is highly vulnerable to aggressive contact, infection, and the sun. Night is his time. Thankfully, his type of condition isn’t contagious; it’s genetic. If he bites you, it won’t spread. But if he doesn’t take his handful of pills everyday, there’s a high risk that he’ll get a flare up, and then the truth comes out: On his face and body will be a rash, unmistakably resembling the fur pattern of a wolf. And that’s just the beginning.

But luckily Keith has his disease under control. Besides the daily hassles and obstacles he’s had to overcome in his past, as well as having the risk of future flare-ups, you would probably never guess by just looking at his elusive appearance that he has two life-altering blood disorders: Lupus and a Factor V Leiden Deficiency.

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that typically strikes adult women—about 10-15 times more likely than men. A healthy immune system is able to distinguish between foreign substances in the body and the body’s own cells; in a person affected by Lupus, the immune system cannot discern between the two. Essentially, the body attacks itself, causing pain, inflammation, and several other internal complications that could lead to death if the disease is left untreated. On top of that, it is extremely difficult to diagnose, mostly because of its obscure symptoms that resemble other common illnesses.

The wolf rash is what blows its cover.

“Back in the day, these people with Lupus would turn into wolves; the butterfly rash that they would get on their faces resembled the animals’ fur pattern, so the disease became associated with the werewolf myth.”

Keith has turned into one about three times in his life—but only after the first blood disorder revealed itself: A Factor V Leiden Deficiency.

Factor V Leiden is an essential protein that stops blood from clotting. Having a deficiency in the gene that allows the body to possess this protein creates an extremely high risk for blood clots throughout the body, most commonly in the leg, lungs, or brain.

Interestingly enough, both Lupus a Factor V Leiden Deficiency are most commonly found in middle-aged women. As an underweight, short boy of only 15 with a passion for wrestling, it then came as a huge surprise when Keith was rushed to the hospital in the fall of his freshman year of high school. A blood clot formed in his body over the course of a month, running the entire length of his leg from his foot all the way up to his groin.

Immediately, doctors forced blood thinners into his system, and they confirmed his condition as a Factor V Leiden Deficiency. Keith’s wrestling halted; adjustments to his life were put into place. The medicine made it risky for Keith to play high-contact sports; if he were injured, the blood thinners would cause his body to suffer from life-threatening internal bleeding.

“The doctors told me that I’d get over it and I’d be fine. They hoped that I would only have to take the blood thinners for six months, and my body would reabsorb the clot. Half a year later, the day before heading off to wrestling camp, my doctor called me and said that I could never be taken off the medicine. There was too much of a risk for the clot to reform.”

Despite having to stop pinning other teammates to the ground for good, Keith kept the sport in his life by managing the team and coaching the younger players. It wasn’t until his senior year that his doctors discovered that he had the disease of the werewolf.

Keith found out about his Lupus when blood tests revealed its presence in his body after he contracted mono. Although the disease is incurable, immunosuppressant medication helps control Lupus, restraining the self-destructing immune system from overreacting to minor infections and the body’s own cells. But the disease flares up periodically when it is provoked, and the toxic cycle begins again. Sunlight, other illnesses, and alcohol are among the factors that aggravate it.

“My immune system is bloodthirsty. It goes after my own self.”

While on a family vacation in Colorado during his senior year of high school, Keith contracted pneumonia. Not thinking it was anything serious, it was left virtually untreated until Keith’s immune system flared up for the first time.

“My body began eating itself—literally. There was something wrong with every organ. And—I looked like a wolf.”

Keith was rushed to the hospital, nearly an hour away from receiving a full blood transfusion. Immediately, he was put on 1,000 milligrams of Prednisone, a steroid that suppresses the immune system. The strength of the medication made him gain twenty-five pounds of fluid in three days. His scalp began to show signs of balding, his stomach could never be full enough, and his emotions were all over the place.

“Steroids messes you up. I could literally feel the food I was eating reaching my esophagus, but I couldn’t stop shoving stuff in my mouth. My skin felt like sandpaper; my stomach had stretch marks because of the rapid weight gain. I looked really funny.”

Much to many of his friends’ disappointment, Keith is off the high dosage of steroids. He still needs it—about twenty milligrams a day—not nearly as much as his emergency dosage from before.

Today, Keith takes pills like it’s his job. Coumadin thins his blood. Planquinil and Prednisone suppress his immune system. Cellcept protects his kidneys. And the multivitamin is for good luck. They add up to about ten pills everyday, and it is imperative that he ingests them religiously. Not to say that Keith hasn’t had his slip ups—one time, he packed his medicine bag in a suitcase that got lost in the airport. Ever since then, they have been attached to him at the hip. Or located conveniently inside his bedside drawer.

This life of pill-taking and regular doctor visits is undetectable when you meet Keith—unless he tells you up front about his disease or you talk to his close friends, who insist that the pills either stop him from turning into a rabid dog, or aid him in his Kung Fu fighting, which he attends three times a week. Most of the time, people find out about his blood disorders at parties, where an all too familiar scenario ensues:

“Hey—why aren’t you drinking tonight?”

It’s a question that has broken the ice numerous times. Keith cannot drink. And he has never been drunk—the blood thinners cannot mix with alcohol, and Lupus is aggravated by it. As a legal-aged college guy who is a regular partygoer, concert-attendee, and licensed bartender, many people find it fascinating that Keith has never even sipped a beer in his life. But don’t be fooled—Keith passed his bartender exam with flying colors. Apparently, it’s not necessary to taste the cosmopolitan you’re mixing in order to perfect it.

But not being able to drink is not an issue. If anything, it has encouraged Keith to keep a clean mind and healthy body. Nevertheless, the thought of being intoxicated does stimulate some sort of fascination.

“I’ve got a tad bit of curiosity about what if feels like to be drunk. But then again, not being able to do it makes me happy. I don’t have to worry about making dumb decisions and regretting things that happened because of a drunken mind. But then again, I don’t have an excuse. I have to own up to everything.”

Most of the time, you’d think that Keith has had a few stiff ones when you see him at parties—including his twenty-first birthday celebration in the fall of last year, when one of his best friends brought non-alcoholic Jell-O shots as party favors. It’s the energy of the social atmosphere that gets him going. But Keith is always sober, always clean, and always ready to take the appropriate action if things go wrong.

“To be honest, I get drunk off the people around me. But as soon as I require a sober mind, I can be in control and react properly.”

It’s safe to say that Keith has embraced his imperfections, and though his medication and everyday risks remind him of his body’s inadequacies, his life is somehow normalized—at least as normal as a Kung Fu fighting film major and bartender from Long Island can be.

Keith meanders to the kitchen, where there have been multiple requests for his cocktails. He pours himself a martini glass-full of ice water and sips it with a sly grin on his face.

“Hey—at least I can pretend to look like I’m as cool as all you normal people.”