Return of the Old Katfish: One Pathfinder's Way of Living with Arthritis

By John P. Lynch

John Lynch was a promising young athlete, but in the spring of 1959, at the age of eleven, he was struck with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), a chronic, painful and disabling disease that today affects 300,000 children in America and makes them unable to live full-functioning, pain-free lives. Children with JRA are sometimes called Ka

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Rheumatoid Arthritis Project
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9780996707732

John P. Lynch

John Lynch, now seventy-three, has had rheumatoid arthritis since 1959. He and his wife, Vivian, have two children: a daughter, Monica, and a son Matt. Lynch holds a BA in chemistry from the University of Washington, an MBA in accounting from the University of Oregon, and a JD from Gonzaga University. In addition to being a retired member of the Washington State Bar Association, he holds a CPA certificate from the Washington State Board of Accountancy. From 1978 to 2007 John was in the private practice of law as a sole proprietor, specializing in plaintiff personal injury & wrongful death cases, estate planning, and probate. For twenty years he was a volunteer advocate for the Great West Region of the Arthritis Foundation. The region honored him with its 2002 Advocacy Award and 2009 Inspirational Leadership Award. In 2013 he was the honoree for the foundation's Inland Northwest Jingle Bell Run. Through the foundation's annual advocacy summits in Washington, D.C., John Lynch and many others have advocated for Medicare coverage of biological drugs for inflammatory arthritis administered to patients during office visits with their rheumatologists. In the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, they raise awareness about arthritis, including juvenile arthritis, and advocate for the appropriation of public resources sufficient to prevent, control, and cure this chronic, painful, and disabling condition.

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Preface

Readers of Tale of an Old Katfish know who Katfish are, but for newcomers to learning the account of my life, the term is neither the internet Catfish, an anonymous online persona surfing the web and ensnaring prey to defraud or romance, nor is it the fish. Katfish are the 300,000 American children suffering from juvenile arthritis.

My purpose in providing this follow-up account is to:

tell more of my childhood memories for their importance in forging my healthy pre-arthritis life;

set forth an unabridged revision of the most pivotal and important case of my legal career;

relate the stories of more Katfish;

update my health status;

report recent developments in the field of juvenile arthritis; and

provide an appendix for the benefit of lawyers and aficionados of the law.

My mission in telling the account of my life has been, is now, and will always be as constant as Polaris: to raise awareness about juvenile arthritis and help find its cure. And now, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

John P. Lynch

Groundhog Day, 2021

Spokane, Washington

Chapter 1

Childhood Living before Juvenile Arthritis

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.

—Charles Lamb

It’s a blond, Dr. Jerome Sweeney dryly noted as I entered this world.

John Patrick is his name! exclaimed Mom at hearing the announcement.

Just a minute, Mrs. Lynch, Dr. Sweeney replied. We don’t know yet if it’s a boy.

In due course, the confusion was cleared up, but in the era before ultrasound, being named before being sexed must have been an unusual occurrence in the delivery room. Regardless, my life began outside the womb as the second son of Jim and Margaret Lynch on July 9, 1947, in Spokane, Washington. Of the eleven years thereafter, the only remarkable feat I recall was playing in two organized tackle football games for St. Augustine Parochial School on the same day. These contests were accorded a small paragraph in our daily bugles, the Spokesman-Review and the Spokane Daily Chronicle. It was the first time, other than my birth announcement, that I, at least at a team level, received publicity.

Our first game was played Saturday morning, and was so uneventful I remember nothing about it. Not so the second game, played in the afternoon at Comstock Park, one of my favorite summertime haunts. As the left halfback in a T formation, I scored on a double reverse, a play called only once the entire season, but my moment of the game as the left linebacker was far more satisfying. Our opponent, Sacred Heart, another South Hill parochial bourgie school in the Catholic League, kept the game close. It being the second game of the day, I was wearing out, but I dug in and summoned the philosophy of my childhood mentor and hero, Alfred E. Newman of Mad magazine infamy—What, me worry?—to run as fast as I could on one of the last plays of the game. I chased my quarry and tackled him before he could cross the goal line. Game saved! St. Augie’s the winner!

What goes around comes around, however; on a bright, sunny autumn day we had the great misfortune of once again playing the St. Al’s Toughs—most regrettably on their turf! They hailed from the North Side blue-collar Logan Neighborhood that includes Gonzaga University. We were known as the South Hill St. Augie’s Cake Eaters, primarily lace-curtain Irish. The venue was Mission Park, right next to my favorite triathlon training grounds, the beautiful 50-meter Witter Pool. Even the old-fogey Italians had prime real estate near the pool to play bocce ball.

I was in my usual form as left linebacker, handing the Toughs my hard-nosed dose of grinding, smashmouth tackles. So far, so good—but not for long! As left halfback I took a handoff from the QB. Bad play. It was probably one of my counterparts who hit my thigh so hard I immediately collapsed, writhing in unbelievable pain with a charley horse. Mom witnessed the vicious tackle and started to run onto the field crying, My baby, my poor baby! Fortunately I was spared mortification when Dad, with might and main, restrained her. Saved from the taunts of the St. Al’s Toughs, just in the nick of time. Thanks, Dad, ever so much!

My first remembrance happened about the age of three. My brother, Jim, had two caged pet rabbits. I suppose my independent bent manifested itself then because I thought they needed extercize, whereupon I released them. This was a mistake for both the rabbits and me. One ran away, never to be seen again, and the other met its demise at the business end of a neighbor’s dog. I’m sure I was disciplined, but the punishment I justly deserved then is beyond recall now. Such was my parents’ gentle way of correcting my errant behavior.

Born between the bookends of my brother and my younger sister, Shannon, I expended a considerable amount of time either trying to rid myself of this troublesome sibling, fending off my brother’s less frequent but similar attempts upon me, or mixing it up with neighborhood kids and schoolyard foes. Such was my fate as a middle child, but these experiences, whether as victor or vanquished, toughened me for the challenges ahead. Notwithstanding the vagaries of middle-child syndrome, I interacted more with Shannon during our youth than with my brother. He was four years older and thus spent a lot of time with kids his age. Even during family vacations, Jim sometimes lived apart from the family, either working at out-of-town summer employment or staying at college year-round. Shannon and I did a lot together during summer trips, principally to the American national parks, Glacier and Yellowstone, and the Canadian national parks, Kootenai, Yoho, Banff, and Jasper. There we would camp, cook outdoors, picnic, fish, water ski, swim, hike, hot spring, and interact with the native wildlife. Our favorite pastimes were chasing bears, collecting frogs, trapping chipmunks, rowing to Glacier’s MacDonald Creek in the vain attempt to catch the huge trout clearly visible to the naked eye, and driving the Going to the Sun Highway, which crested at Logan Pass more than 6,000 feet above sea level and where the Continental Divide inside the park separates mountain water into flowing eastward to the Mississippi River or westward to the Pacific Ocean. In British Columbia we boated and water skied at Lake Okanogan where Ogopogo (the equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster) lived. Water skiing there was fraught with worry, so we made an extraordinary effort not to fall and be swallowed whole by the legendary denizen of the deep.

We also loved to visit Shuswap Lake in central British Columbia and camp at the provincial park of Scotch Creek. Once we set up the tent and stored the other gear, it was off to explore the four arms of the 700 miles of shoreline that form an H at the Cinnemousun Narrows. Sparsely populated in all its arms, Shuswap was a magnificent adventure, especially while water skiing. Shuswap is the indigenous people’s word that means Meeting of the Waters, and they meet at the Cinnemousun Narrows, another provincial park. Mom was born in Canada, so our many travels there nourished my Canadian roots, which took hold in eastern British Columbia and western Alberta. I was fortunate indeed to be blessed with many visits there.

In 1964 our family made a cross-country trip, along with my best friend, Paul Tusch, to Washington, D.C., and to the New York World’s Fair. We met up with our Indiana relatives, Aunt Ramona and Uncle John, and our cousins, Babs, Susan, and Mary in D.C., then journeyed north to New York City. Paul and I saw a very young Woody Allen perform in Greenwich Village. On the subway back to midtown Manhattan well after midnight, Paul abandoned me and headed to Staten Island where he was staying with relatives. I was now alone and scared to death, but I survived the terror and arrived at our hotel safe and somewhat sound.

Leaving the Indiana contingent of the family in Maine, we headed home through Canada, visiting my maternal grandparents, William and Rose Shannon, five of their seven children, Thelma, Jack, Mary, Bill, and Norma, and our sixteen Canadian first cousins. It was a worthwhile trip, especially to be with Grandpa Shannon. Though illiterate his entire life, he supervised large work crews because he knew how to motivate men to do their jobs. This quality enabled him to earn enough to support his wife and their large family, and with his help, Mom fulfilled his dream that she become a registered nurse. I’ll never forget Grandpa Shannon.

As for the neighborhood where we grew up, it was chock-ablock loaded with newly minted postwar baby boomers. Thus Shannon and I spent a lot of time playing with the immediate neighborhood gangs of fifteen contemporaries: The Corrigan clan of Dennis, Molly, Marcia, Monica, Tom, and Melissa; the Anderson brothers, Mick, Gary, and Kevin; the Allers brood, Arlene, Jackie, Judy, Jamie, and Nick; and the Derr girl, Dee Anne. Our backyard, with its lone and lofty ponderosa pine, was the center of the action, particularly at night, for games to begin and end there.

Geographically, the Corrigans lived next door north; the Andersons next door east; the Allers across the street south; and the Derrs next door west. When the three Lynch siblings were added to the mix, there were eighteen rug rats ready to play together or fight one another. Alliances were broken as quickly as they were formed. Nonetheless, my childhood was truly a blessing and it helped me develop into, for the most part, a well-adjusted, tax-paying adult.

In addition to these playmates, we spent a lot of time with our first cousins, the Tritt boys. Dad’s younger sister, Aunt Margie, was married to Hollis Tritt, and they had four sons: Ed, Jack, Bill, and Mark. They were our only relatives in Spokane. The rest of them, both the Lynch and Shannon families, lived in the Midwest and eastern Canada. We shared the traditional family activities and festivities with the Tritts from the time we were born.

Recently, my cousin Jack died unexpectedly while on a walk with his wife Andrea. It was a shock, but it was mercifully quick. The father of two daughters, I can just imagine how they doted on their dad and he on them and their mother. Like my cousin Babs Barnhart, Jack was closest in age, so naturally he and I spent most of our family get-togethers playing with each other rather than with my other cousins. My best memory of him was his earnest wish to become a fireman. He lived two blocks from Spokane Fire Station 9 and witnessed a lot of runs. An old-fashioned station, it had two floors, the upper for the dormitory and the lower for the trucks and gear. The two were connected by a brass pole, and it was a joy to watch the firemen slide down it when a run began. Is it any wonder my cousin became a fireman? May the Lord rest his soul and comfort his family.

Shannon married Frank Dickens, and they have five children: Frankie Rose, Lizzie, Noah, Shane, and Joseph. Jim married Valerie Valasina, and they have two sons: Brian and Michael. My siblings have also been blessed with grandchildren.

When I wasn’t tussling with Shannon or mixing it up with the usual suspects from the neighborhood gangs, my sense of adventure led me to spend a lot of time in the three public parks near my home: Comstock Park, Cannon Hill Park, and the crown jewel of all Spokane parks, Manito Park. Manito is the Algonquin native people’s word that means the deified Spirit or Force of Nature, either good or bad. Spokane, named for the Spokan indigenous people, means Children of the Sun.

Manito, Cannon Hill, and Comstock played a significant role in my life. Living in Spokane and playing in its sunny parks, I developed my body through swimming, skating, sledding, and football. In the summer I learned to swim at Comstock’s pool because Mom insisted on it. In winter I taught myself to ice skate and play hockey at Cannon Hill when its pond froze. It was Manito, however, the largest and prettiest of the three, and less than a block from home, where I spent most of my youth. Manito, Comstock, and Cannon Hill offered the space and freedom I needed to play, especially football. This challenging game inevitably led to my first career choice: Playing linebacker for the Baltimore Colts. Having started with the pads, cleats, and helmet in the autumn of fifth grade at Cannon Hill, I eagerly looked forward to the end of summer, even though it meant the start of school.

Chapter 2

Childhood Living with Juvenile Arthritis

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

—Charles Dickens

In addition to improving at football during the autumn of sixth grade, I actually liked a new subject: History. As school was not my forte, it was a pleasant surprise to discover this interest. It was innate, though, because Dad had enjoyed it too, so my appreciation of history derives from the same genuine curiosity he’d had about notable people and events. Consequently, I inherited his books about such people and events as The Butte Irish, Antietam, Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, Team of Rivals, Yankee from Olympus, The Guns of August, Guadalcanal Diary, The Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, The Glory and the Dream, and American Caesar.

Thus began a promising school year. I even took over my brother’s afternoon paper route and made some money, but I quickly learned the lesson of be careful what you wish for. I didn’t realize how hard it would be. There were about a hundred subscribers, so I carried a two-sided bag, each holding fifty newspapers, more or less. The route started on a steep hill leading up to St. Augie’s Rectory. Directly across the street was a three story apartment building—with no elevator! From there it was up and