Victoria Cupay, 28, an Illinois woman, spent 30 days in an induced coma while doctors fought to save her life. She had previously been diagnosed with lupus, but her body reacted to a medicine she took. In basic terms, her body began to burn from the inside out. Eventually, she woke up from her nightmare to a life-changing sight. Her boyfriend stood beside her with a diamond ring. They were getting married.
Videos by Wide Open Country
Doctors diagnosed Cupay with Lupus back in 2016. The diagnosis came out of nowhere since no members of her family had the disease, which targets the body's organs and tissues by mistake and attacks them via antibodies. "I went from taking no medications to taking more medications than my grandmother. It was such a big change, they told me that it's incurable," Cupay told the Daily Mail.
She had to live with the disease moving forward, but that didn't stop her whatsoever. Cupay, born in the Philippines, had moved to Illinois in 2011 and had made her life in the States. Two years after her Lupus diagnosis, Cupay met the love of her life, Nick Baldo, in a nightclub in California. The two started dating and began visiting each other in Illinois and California, taking turns.
However, things took a dramatic turn when Cupay reacted to a medication. She rushed to the hospital and doctors diagnosed her with two different disorders: Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis. Both of these disorders happened as a result of her body reacting to the medication and caused Cupay's skin to develop rashes and blisters.
"I was put in an ICU Burn Unit. I'm not technically a burn victim, but what happened to me was I was burning inside out from inside out," Cupay said. However, the disorders also affected her internal organs. "What was happening on my skin, it was sloughing off," she added. "That was also happening in my intestines and other organs."
A Marriage Proposal
To treat her, doctors induced her into a coma that lasted for 30 days. On August 19, she finally woke up and saw Baldo with a diamond ring, asking her to marry him. "He actually asked my mom before he proposed, because that was one of my requests way before I got sick," Cupay said. "He respected that wish." According to Cupay, she had "a lot of close calls to death," so Baldo decided to propose to give Cupay a good memory in case she didn't make it.
They eventually did get married, but three years later, on August 19, 2022. Part of the delay was to give Cupay time to recover. She ended up spending 240 days in several hospitals, during which she needed a lot of support from her family, especially Baldo. "Throughout all of that, Nick was beside me," she said.
Eventually, the COVID pandemic hit, and that is when Baldo moved to Illinois, which was his home state. "We were together during the pandemic, and that was a very crucial moment in my recovery," Cupay said.
The couple married, Cupay graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree in public health in 2023, and, in an almost miraculous event, Cupay and Baldo became parents in 2024. "Lupus patients are prone to miscarriages, and so it was a high-risk pregnancy," Cupay said. "We wanted him for the longest time."
During that time, Cupay also became a TikTok sensation after she posted the proposal and wedding videos in 2022. She uses her platform to raise awareness about lupus and to share her love story with Baldo.
