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Alison Remains Positive Despite An Arthritis Diagnosis

 
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Alison, who was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when she was 15 months old, has overcome physical challenges and is now married and teaching her students to remain positive in any situation.

Michelle King Robson:
There are a lot of facts about arthritis. It affects more than 50 million Americans. Arthritis is actually a 100 different diseases and it costs our economy $128 billion, yes billion dollars annually. But those numbers don’t tell the real story about the people who are affected.

Today we put a face on juvenile arthritis. At the Arthritis Foundation’s red carpet event I got a chance to meet Alison Fischer.

Alison:

Yes, when I was a baby, at 15 months old I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, since I was young.

Michelle King Robson:
Since you were so young, and so what happened with your family? I am sure they must have been surprised?

Alison:
Yes, but from what I understand, my mom told me that I crawled really early so she thought I’d be walking very well and she has had to realize that I was crying more and I wouldn’t even crawl around a lot to get my toys. So that’s when she figured out that something was different about me and she is a registered nurse.

Michelle King Robson:
Oh she is.

Alison:
So I think when I talk to her now about it she feels bad actually that it took her quite a few months to realize that something was wrong but when she realized that I was in pain then I did go to my . . . I think to even our general doctor – yeah, our pediatrician was, he was able to firmly diagnose it early.

Michelle King Robson:
Oh, so he was.

Alison:
…which is really nice so I don’t know if, I may have had the ‘R’ . . . some people have their ‘R’ factor show up; some people don’t. So I may have had it in my blood work right away because I know some people, it took years to figure out what they have, but for me it was at 15 months, it was right away.

Michelle King Robson:
Right, because some people, they are misdiagnosed for a long, long time.

Alison:
Yes, for a long time, yes, exactly.

Michelle King Robson:
So tell me what it’s been like to live with this?

Alison:
It is was very hard. Since I had to learn to walk with it I had to adapt to my walking, my knees were affected the most, so actually walked on my tip toes. Now I realize as I am older I walked on my tip toes, just my knees never straightened out fully. My legs did not extend fully and so I was slower. In classes I had to either leave classes early, a few minutes early or late, to get to my next class.

I’d be careful through the hallways and even to hear long distance, even the mall for me, I remember I’d have my mom, I’d go shopping a lot with my mom and she push me in the wheelchair. So even that, as a kid I couldn’t do that myself; I was very tired.

Michelle King Robson:
Despite growing up with severe pain and fatigue, Alison’s spirit was not impacted.

Alison:
I mean, I always had a positive attitude. I always used to say, I realize that, you know, take one day at a time is the motto that I had because you definitely have good days and you have bad days and it might be just today I am feeling really good, I can go walk and everything; tomorrow I might want to stay inside, I mean I had to go to school but you may not want to be as active. So that’s definitely what I learned.

Michelle King Robson:
And with the support of her family and the Arthritis Foundation Alison not only found friends, but the love of her life.

You started going to these conferences and you started to meet people.

Alison:
Yes, the people I met, they were some of the most caring genuine friends that I have, that I still have 11 years later and some of them are from Wisconsin and New York and all over the country and one of those people I met is now my husband and actually we celebrated our sixth anniversary last Saturday.

Michelle King Robson:
Oh congratulations! That’s amazing.

Alison:
So it has been so nice. Growing up with it I never thought I would, to be a woman with… I thought oh, I’ll meet this strong man and he will be able to help me and carry me and my friend and I would joke in college even and then I met my husband and he actually uses a wheelchair – a power chair and so we had to figure out oh okay, we can help each other though. You know, it’s wonderful but when I met him, you know, we understand. I can say my knee hurts and since he has it also he really, truly understands the pain that I am going through.

Michelle King Robson:
So you’re really such a great support for each other.

Alison:
Exactly, yeah I actually said that at one of our conferences, actually he proposed to me in 2003 and, you know, at one of the conferences and one of the sessions was on journaling so we had this little free write and somebody spoke about there, about going to the conferences and meeting up once a year with these wonderful friends and I started crying because she said, “I get to see you every once a year” and I was like, I thought to myself, “I have got a home,” you know because I was with Pete at the time and I get to see him every day and it was like ‘oh wow’ and then that night he proposed. It was amazing. It was amazing.

Michelle King Robson:
That’s a great story. You are so positive. You’ve got this beautiful smile and these amazing eyes and I can tell that you’ve got a huge heart. So, what is it that keeps you going?

Alison:
I have to attribute it to my parents obviously first because since I was a baby when I got this disease so they instilled in me some of that positiveness, positivity – just to keep going, and I think just, I always looked at the brighter side when I was grown up. Since I was sore I couldn’t do sports obviously at all. That was not even an option for me, but instead of being bitter about it actually when I would come home I would take a nap, like I said, because I was tired.

But after that I’d study and actually was able to get a four-point in high school. So now I wonder about that and I think, if I was in sports and not have arthritis, could I have done that? I just put my time into that instead and so I always thought, like my motto my senior high school was ‘if life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ because I couldn’t dwell on the fact that I couldn’t do sports or run or riding a regular bike. I didn’t do that for fear of falling and really hurting myself so I didn’t dwell on the bad parts. I just, I turned it positive and had a great academic career in high school. And now that I am a teacher I can give that positivity to my students and I just really want to help them learn and be a good citizen.

Michelle King Robson:
Well you are setting the example, there’s no question and you certainly learned how to take lemon and turn it into lemonade and you are a bright light.

Alison:
Thank you.

Michelle King Robson:
Today’s HER Story was brought to you by Aleve – two pills, all day relief. For more inspirational stories and information that will empower you and your health visit EmpowHER.com.

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