After various strange symptoms last year including joint pain, a bright rash, spiking temperatures, weight loss, lethargy and swollen lymph glands, my son Charlie was diagnosed with systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis. He was 13.  JIA is an auto-immune disease which started after he got chicken pox.  His immune system should have attacked the chicken pox but instead it started to attack his body, causing the systemic JIA. 

Charlie loves his sport so this was a cruel blow.  When he was first diagnosed, his football season had just finished, he had scored twice in the cup final for his beloved Oakfield and was looking forward to the cricket season.  He didn't manage to play at all, and spent all of the summer holidays in hospital or at home with no energy.  When he was put on steroids he perked up enormously, got his strength back and managed to play most of the football matches this season, scoring again in this year's cup final, and managed to play some golf again.  However, children should not be on steroids for long periods and as he weaned off them, his symptoms started to return.  He missed a lot of school this year - some days he had to get downstairs on his bum because he couldn't walk, sometimes he struggled to get his arms out from under the duvet.  He is now on a lot of different medication including steroids again, and weekly injections of Methotrexate, but has just started a new biologic drug which is administered via an hour long infusion in the hospital.  He will have to have these every 4 weeks, as well as the other medication. 12,000 children in the UK suffer with JIA.  Systemic JIA is rare - there are only 1200 children with this in the UK.

The charity Arthritis Research UK work hard to research all types of Arthritis, and new drugs are being tried all the time.  Please give what you can to help the charity to fund their research and help people like Charlie..... please dig deep and donate now.