When Madison Cline, now 11, complained a few years ago about her thumb hurting, then her elbow, then her ankle, her mother thought she was just being a kid.
The only thing Ali Darnell-Nielsen ever saw was a tiny scab Madison pointed to the day she said her ankle hurt. "Oh, come on. You're fine. Just walk it off," she told her daughter, then in second grade.
But that night, as they made their way up the steps at the Kansas Coliseum for a Wichita Thunder game, Darnell-Nielsen turned to look back at Madison and saw her holding on to the rail with both hands, trying to lift one foot and trying hard not to cry.
"I just knew something was seriously wrong with her," Darnell-Nielsen says.
It turned out to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder that causes swelling, stiffness and sometimes reduced motion. One in 250 children have some form of arthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The morning after that Thunder game, Madison had a doctor's appointment. When her mother went in to wake her, she found her daughter already awake and quietly crying.
Madison remembers, "I woke up, and I could not move at all. I was crying because it hurt so bad."
In a way, Madison is lucky: She has found a medicine that works.
But because infections can aggravate her condition, she had her tonsils and adenoids removed and had surgery on her sinuses. She takes an antibiotic from fall through spring for the same reason. That's in addition to the five medicines she takes year-round, several of them a couple of times a day.
With all that, "Occasionally I wake up, and my wrist or my ankle hurts," she says, describing the pain as both sharp and aching. "But it's not nearly as bad as it used to be."
Her mom says, "There are just certain things she doesn't do." High-impact activities are out. She tried jumping rope; the resulting pain landed her in the emergency room.
Still, says Madison, who will start sixth grade at Andover Middle School, "Just because we have it doesn't mean we have to be treated differently."
Few of Madison's friends know she has rheumatoid arthritis. Darnell-Nielsen talks to school nurses and teachers but to few others "because people tend to treat her a little differently. They're a little easier on her," and Madison doesn't want that.
Madison won't be at the Arthritis Foundation's Fun Day on Saturday, but she always participates in its spring fundraising walk and collected $1,200 to $1,300 for the most recent effort. The walk, Darnell-Nielsen says, gives Madison the opportunity to meet others with the disorder and to have a sense of control over it.
Madison's real hope is that she'll go into remission someday soon. That, her mother says, would mean she'd have no more chance than any other adult of having rheumatoid arthritis later on.
If you go
FUN DAY 2008
What: Fourth Annual Juvenile Arthritis Family Educational Fun Day 2008
Where: Derby Recreation Commission, 801 E. Market in Derby
When: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday
How much: $35 per family, which includes continental breakfast and lunch
For more information, call
316-263-0116.c
Reach Karen Shideler at 316-268-6674 or kshideler@wichitaeagle.com. To see more of The Wichita Eagle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansas.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2008 The Wichita Eagle, Kan.