Katrina Thornley on why arthritis does not define her

When Katrina Thornley was just a year old, she started learning to walk - and then suddenly stopped. "My mother told me that I would just sit on the floor and cry," she says. When her parents took her to the doctor, they found out that their baby girl had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. "It was a hard to believe," says Katrina. "I didn't even have any family history."

She had to be bandaged up in splints every night so that her joints could grow straight. At age seven, the arthritis flared up again and doctors noticed that her jaw and elbows were not properly developing and she was put on different medication. Another flare occurred at the age of 13. When she was 18, she had to have surgery in both her wrists, making it impossible to bend them. She had to learn to write all over again and simple things - such as picking something off a top shelf or opening a jar - became impossible.

"For a person suffering from arthritis, there isn't a cure," says Katrina. "The ideal scenario is to go into remission, a point where the disease is no longer active. But at the same time, if you look at my joints, they are not going to go back to what they could have been.

The condition cannot be reversed - they will always be damaged."
"Once you go into remission, it's amazing," she adds. "But it's not always forever. Anything in life could trigger another flare up - a new diet, shifting houses, stress. It's not in your control."

Having grown up with arthritis is not something most people would describe as lucky, but that's what Katrina calls it. In fact, the word crops up several times in conversation, an insight on the importance of positive thinking. Katrina mentions how lucky she is to have been correctly diagnosed at a young age, and over the fact that she never felt like she had something taken away. "I empathise with people - an athlete, for example - whose life changed with a diagnosis. I always knew that I couldn't be a professional tennis player or ballet dancer. It's all about the mindset."

Katrina may be realistic but she's also, as her husband describes, "stubborn". "If anyone ever told me I couldn't do something, I would turn around and say, 'Yes, I can'. When a doctor told me I could never learn to ski because it was bad for my knees, I learned to snowboard instead."

It's the same attitude that has seen her travel through New Zealand and Australia, skydive and run 10K marathons. But she's the first to admit that some days are harder than others, and that more awareness needs to be out there. "The problem with arthritis and conditions like it is that, like many mental illnesses, they are not visible. If I was wearing a cast, people would be sympathetic but, when they look at me, they just assume I'm fine. And sometimes, I'm not. I'll be feeling like I've been hit by a bus."

Her advice to everyone suffering from a similar condition is to stay positive. "There are days when patients ask me why this happened to them, and I always say, 'We were chosen because we can handle it'. It's easy to look at the negative things in life, the things we can't do. But I choose to celebrate the things that I can do."
janice@khaleejtimes.com