Raleigh woman with lupus uses thousands of Christmas lights to raise awareness, funds
WAKE COUNTY (WTVD) -- A north Raleigh woman has created a Christmas light display at her home in hopes of raising money for important medical research.
She has tens of thousands of lights and she's been adding to her show now for years, but the cause hits home for her.
Robin Reid is battling lupus and said it can be difficult some days, but creating these intricate Christmas light displays not only brightens up her holidays, it brightens up her hope for a cure.
You can donate to the cause here by dedicating your donation in honor of Robin Reid.
Her red, white and blue lights flash to the beat of the music. Reid sets up a transmitter to broadcast the music over the radio for folks coming to watch in their cars.
Her Christmas light show has 28 songs and she programs each one of the 50,000 lights individually for each song, by herself.
"A lot of it is programming," Reid said, "so I could lay in bed while I was sick and I can program away."
Her children helped her find the hobby when she first started feeling sick and she had to put her life on pause.
"Really, really horrible fatigue," Reid said describing her first symptoms. "I would just sit in a chair and I wasn't sleeping but I couldn't even open my eyes. I couldn't watch television. I couldn't do anything."
She would later find out it was lupus. Reid said the disease causes her terrible joint pain, fevers and has somewhat affected her mind.
She raised $3,000 for lupus last year and is hoping to double that this year.
While she can no longer put up some of the lights without help, she hopes they'll shine a light on donating to lupus research.
"I just robs you of who you were as a person," Reid said. "But every dollar that we can raise hopefully with the help of these lights, I hope to be at helping somebody out there."
If you want to check out her Christmas display for yourself, she's on the 1400 block of Whittington Drive in north Raleigh, and she's transmitting that Christmas Music on 95.9 herself.
