Children rush around like mad things. They’re energetic and excitable and as such they’re always knocking into things and getting bangs and scrapes. When you’re a kid you’re much more likely to come into sudden contact with the ground than you are when you’re a grownup which is just as well, we’re a bit frailer aren’t we? The issue is that kids who have the bad luck to develop juvenile arthritis may not notice it as the symptoms are aches and pains and they’re likely to cause a fair few of those to themselves.
Once a diagnosis has been reached, and this can take a while, children will find the restrictions and alterations which are suddenly forced onto their lives to be suffocating. It’s much worse for them than it would be for an adult sufferer as they traditionally spend much more of their time in motion than we do. They’re more likely to be outdoors and playing games than being sat inside reading or watching telly. It’s even worse when you add to this the sudden reliance on regular drug taking to retain mobility. Kids aren’t overly reliable and having to enforce the regimen often falls to already exhausted parents and let’s face it, kids don’t like taking their medicine. They never have.
The worrying thing about juvenile arthritis is that, though it’s not massively common in the world today, it’s getting more common and it’s one of the largest causes of disability in young people under the age of 16. Can you imagine losing the ability to move around as much as you’d want to as a child? As you get older and enter old age you’re not going to be the most mobile you’ve been anyway, arthritis is never a good thing but it’s less restricting to people who spent less time in motion anyway.
So, if you’re a parent and your child complains of persistent pain when moving, it’s best to get it checked by your doctor as soon as you can!
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