I finally got diagnosed when I was 20, but the first symptoms began when I was four.I was hospitalised with swollen knees for a week and checked for juvenile idiopathic arthritis in the three months afterwards. Although nothing came of it, I seemed absolutely fine. But that kind of susceptibility to having arthritis was always there.
The first symptom was swelling on my fourth finger on my right hand – it was a strange sensation, I couldn’t bend it.It was really stiff in the mornings. As well as that I was overwhelmingly unwell. It was 2013 and I was aged 20, and at university. I was sleeping up to 16 hours a day. I was full of cold. And that was the start of my body attacking itself, and the start of having autoimmune disease-based arthritis. This went on for about six weeks, so I ended up taking time off from university and going home. The symptoms seemed to settle down, but then they started to spread into my thumbs and into my other fingers.
No one could really tell me what was going on.Doctors were telling me that I’d probably got extended “freshers’ flu”. But I ended up going to A&E at one point because I couldn’t bend my thumbs, they were so swollen and big and I was crying – I was just so scared. But again, at A&E they couldn’t tell me anything. They said I had to see the GP.
It was only when I had an ultrasound on my fingers
