Charlotte has juvenile idiopathic arthritis polyarticular with a rheumatoid factor positive. When she was at her worse she was in lots of pain and struggled with depression. Her medication helps take the edge off the pain and she finds happiness in helping others with the condition.

I wanted to kill myself, I didn’t want to be dead but I didn’t want to be here in pain, so yeah. And I was just, this is going to sound really horrible but I like, I, at times and I know other people with Arthritis have said this but at times we wish we had a different illness that can either be cured or kills you, because you’re living in pain your whole life and yeah, that just seems, I was just like Why Why me But now I look back and think like I don’t think in that way at all anymore. And yeah it was quite as; I was probably quite horrible to live with because I was just so miserable and sad all the time. And I just, I’d got to the point where I didn’t know what it felt like to be happy. I forgot, I was starting to forget what it felt like to be happy and was starting to, but I didn’t know what it was like not to be in pain anymore. And then I was losing my like happiness as well. So yeah. But and the psychologist helped with that and then it was my Occupational Therapist who actually explained like the whole grief cycle, and then I’ve kind of just started to get to the point like this isn’t you, you’ve got to do something about it. You’ve got the diagnosis now, which is the hardest part you’ve got an illness, you’ve got to live with it. Yeah. So make the best out of the bad situation.

In the hydropool it’s basically a huge pool that’s heated. So it’s like a massive bath really, a warm bath. So cos it’s warm it’s nice on our joints. And because it’s in the water it takes the impact off and it’s easier to move our joints there. So we just do stretches, or like if I’m having a bad day, like I had a flare up and it was my neck and back were really painful. So she just like she let me in the hydro pool, I just relaxed and then I stretched them out gently and then, then I had a knot in my back which was really painful, she massaged it out for me. And then, yeah we do stretches and just walks and runs and, just to get your like, just to exercise your muscles and stretch them out without it being too much of an impact and hurting too much.

Where do the exercises come from?

Yeah the physio, your physiotherapist is in the pool with you. And she does them with you.

And do you have different people in the pool at the same time doing the same thing?

Sometimes. Not all the time, sometimes.

They do their own thing do they?

Oh they’re doing their own thing with their own physio. it’s just one on one.

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want me to be ill. I don’t think he’s accepted it. I think he’s in, I think he’s the one who’s found it hardest, like I was on, I think he’s, cos obviously he’s in the Army and away, when I’m really ill he comes home and he came home and he, obviously I’m stuck in bed so he comes and sits with me and puts on a film.

When I was in hospital he came back from where he’s based and came to the hospital and brought me DVDs and food, and yeah. And I was on crutches at one point and he rang, he kept ringing me to find out if I was off them yet. And yeah, he’s quite, we’re quite close so, and he can be quite protective as well, so I think he finds it quite hard cos I’m in pain and he can’t stop it. So I think he probably finds it the hardest out of the whole family. Like we were walking along and he was like, Walk normally And, but yeah I think he just wants me to be normal. I don’t think he wants me to be ill, but yeah. Only one sibling can get the illness, so I took it for him so he should be thankful.

And you mentioned about the injections didn’t you, he didn’t want you to be on those?

Oh yeah I did an injection in front of him and he was like Oh don’t do that

Okay then so can you explain how arthritis has affected your social life?

Well before treatment well it didn’t really affect it as much as it probably could have because I didn’t let it, like I still went even though I was advised not to, like my parents didn’t want me to and I probably shouldn’t have, I still went on holiday with my friends and when I was really bad and I still went to Prom, I still went to the summer parties, the end of GCSE things. I still joined in. Although I couldn’t, although I had to sit down and probably didn’t do half as much as what I used to and was asleep most of it, I was still there so I wasn’t missing out. But then towards the few weeks before diagnosis I was basically in bed but my I’m fortunate enough to have a best friend that would come down and spend, even though we weren’t doing anything she didn’t mind that as long as she was like with me. So I was fortunate enough to have friends so I still had a social life even though I was in bed. So yeah it has, it didn’t really affect it too much.

I’d been to the Occupational Therapist who explained the whole grief cycle. And she, in, within that she said, You’re not weak if you feel that way And that’s how I felt, I felt weak if I told people. And then just by her I realised she was right. So I was able to like to say, Okay I need help I don’t want to feel like, I didn’t want to feel like this anymore but I didn’t know how to not feel like it. So then by accepting that, reaching the bottom I was able to then come back up again. And then I started I just wanted to help, I didn’t want other people to feel like that so I found ways in helping other people, and then that’s, that’s just bought a lot of positivity as well.

And so it helps you feel good about yourself if you can help others?

Yeah.

I didn’t think that I had the right to feel sad and upset when there was other people going, like other people in the world that were dying and ill, and I felt guilty that I felt like sad that I had this illness, but then I realised well, its, I’ve never had any problems in my life so this to me is quite, is a problem. So I was able to accept that everything and then through that I was able to accept that I actually had the disease and to live with it, move on because you have no control over the disease, but you have control over whether you learn to deal with it and move on and have, you can, you can, it’s your control whether it’s a good outcome or a bad outcome. So I wanted a good outcome from it so that’s where I’m heading.

They had pull down beds. It was very cool, yeah. The steroid infusion wasn’t very nice though. It was like, they told, they said about the effects that when it was going to happen they leave this, a really horrible taste in your mouth, and I was like sat there eating chocolate trying to get rid of it, and nothing was getting rid of it. So I just had to sit there whilst I was having this thing, with this bad taste in my mouth. And then afterwards as well another effect is really rosy cheeks, which I get, from, even with the oral ones, so I was just like really really rosy and flushed in the hospital. And because of the medication that I was on, it was like the co-codamol which obviously makes you constipated and so they were giving me really disgusting laxatives that I had to drink. And because I was in hospital I had to do, drink it there and then. So that was really horrible. There was no escaping.