I am the sister of a diffuse scleroderma patient. She is forty-two years old. A year and a half ago she was diagnosed with Raynaud’s. Due to this she had a scleroderma related renal crisis which made her blood pressure higher and she developed ischemia.

Now she is recovering at the hospital, after a scleroderma related renal insufficiency. She is in the acute phase of the illness, and she has a hardened skin, third degree, that has affected her hands, arms, chest and legs. Now she is hospitalized because her illness has taken her kidneys and she is at risk of dialysis and cutaneous hardening in the third degree.