‘Running injury’ at 17 turned out to be arthritis
WHEN Ailsa Campbell began getting pains in her wrist and knee, she thought she had suffered a running injury. Aged 17, the last thing on her mind was arthritis – so often associated with old age.
Six years later, she has had to give up the athletics she loved and, although fit and active, often finds herself hobbling from the stiffness in her joints.
While a long way from needing a stick or mobility scooter, the student can be left in agony if she sits for too long and says there are days when ‘I feel like an old person’.
But she is determined to highlight the fact that she is not – and that arthritis strikes large numbers of young people.
Now aged 23, Ailsa is one of 12,000 young people and children in the UK battling the condition, which can affect people as young as ten. She hopes to become a rheumatologist to help others cope with arthritis.
She explained: ‘I have had good experiences and bad experiences. There have been doctors who have almost patronised me, or treated me as they would someone older. I had physical therapy and was told to do simple, slow exercises
I was told to hold a piece of paper with my fingers and pull it, which might work for an older person, but it is swimming and running which I do as a younger person that helps me.
‘It’s what drives me to want to help people myself.’
As a teenager with pain in her wrist and a sore knee, Ailsa had doctors puzzled at first.
She left it more than a year before deciding to go to her GP about her aches and pains.
At first she had assumed that she had just overstretched herself running or Highland dancing.
When she was referred to a rheumatologist, it was found that, in fact, she had seronegative inflammatory arthritis – which doesn’t show up in blood tests.
A malfunction in Ailsa’s immune system means that it attacks the cells lining her joints – making them swollen, stiff and painful. Over time it can damage the joint itself, the cartilage and nearby bone.
She was diagnosed at the age of 19 and admits having been ‘scared’ at having arthritis.
On living with her new limitations, she said: ‘The cold can make my arthritis worse and my exams, when I was sitting down studying for long periods of time, didn’t help.
‘I can struggle to walk and, at my age, that is the most frustrating thing in the world. Strangely enough, none of my grandparents have arthritis, just me.
‘But you do get used to it and the tiredness and fatigue that it causes.’
The National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society has warned that more than two-thirds of rheumatology nurse specialists in Scotland are over the age of 55 and will retire within the next decade.
Ailsa – who lives with her fiancé Neil in Dundee – also wants there to be more health professionals to deal with young, as well as older, sufferers of the condition.
She added: ‘My friends have been so supportive but when I was diagnosed, several were shocked. So was I because I thought this only happened to pensioners.
‘I would like the message to get through to people that it can happen to anyone.
‘Maybe as a rheumatologist, I would be able to help with that.’