Juvenile Arthritis, Blindness and Living with Joy: An Interview with Joy Ross

I love my job with HealthCentral for many reasons. One of them as I get to talk to a lot of really interesting people. A few weeks ago I met Joy Ross — a wonderful, inspiring and positive woman. She was a joy to interview and very graciously shared her story:

 ""I am happier without sight than when I could see."

Joy Ross is 36, lives just outside Portland, Oregon. She has been happily married for 12 years to her husband George and the mother of two beautiful daughters, Isabella (10) and Georgianna (7). Joy has had juvenile arthritis (JA) since she was three years old. As a child, her disease was primarily expressed through uveitis, an inflammation of the eyes. Joy had her first cataract surgery at age 5, but as she grew up at a time when there were no treatments for JA and RA, her sight got worse as the years went on. When she was in grade 7, the JA spread to her joints."

You can read the rest of the interview here to find out why she's happier now than she's ever been before.
    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more