Living with difference and pain

The two strongest experiences described by children with arthritis are of pain and their feeling of being different from their friends, even when they appear to look ‘normal’. In primary school, children become aware that families are different, and that each child is unique. Initially their natural sense of uniqueness and growing self-awareness is in step with their peers. The crunch comes when children begin to change their sense of uniqueness for a realisation of their difference. Children realise that arthritis makes them feel different, at a time when they desperately want to be the same as everyone else. For some children this sense of being different can become the primary consequence of arthritis.

On the following pages you can see how some children described what their arthritis felt like:

How I got Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

"I was 2 1/2 when I first got JCA. I am now 81/2 and have had it 51/4 years and used to take: (methotrexate), steroids, sitrom, folic acid, zantic, ibrupropin, methotrexate liquid and tablets. I hate being different and not being able to do all the things every body else can do. And once I went to hospital and the nurse said "don't cry, I have a headache!" I don't think that is very kind, people need to cry in their lives. I have recently applied to go to get your own back, my own back on my doctor.
by Beth Britton '98

Another girl wrote: