I have experienced chronic pain and intermittent reduced mobility resulting from osteoarthritis since childhood.  Four decades and a couple of joint replacements later, the arthritis continues to spread and I have further orthopaedic surgery to look forward to in previously healthy joints.

“Why me?!” is a question which has haunted me for a long time, although in my youth, it pertained simply to considerations of my own sheer carelessness, bad luck and frustration, rather than a more serious consideration of the likelihood of why a particular individual might develop arthritis.

I was born ‘healthy’ with no known physical abnormalities, and was sufficiently fortunate to be born into a family with no history of juvenile arthritic conditions.  I enjoyed sports at school, practised gymnastics and athletics, and had a passion for running, especially 400m sprints;  I loved the freedom, weightlessness and exhilaration that always came with running.

This is the first time I have recorded any of these experiences, and am already amazed at how vivid my memories are.

By the time I was about 9 years old, I began having problems with my left leg; it would ‘collapse’ (as I used to describe it) when I was doing PE, I would find myself sprawled on the ground, there was an intense burning pain inside my knee, and I was unable to stand or walk for several minutes.  These experiences were both painful and humiliating; the intensity of the pain always made me cry, and then I felt really ashamed in front of my classmates, firstly for crying in front of everyone, but also for being unable to stand or walk.  The knee itself was red, hot and very swollen and it took some time before it would straighten again and function normally.  It might then be several days before the next episode.

After several visits to the family doctor, our GP declared that he couldn’t find anything wrong with my knee or my leg (although, of course, it never ‘collapsed’ in his presence) and he suspected that I was lying to gain attention for some reason (!).  However, he did finally refer me to an orthopaedic consultant at the local hospital.  After further x-rays, the consultant declared that he ‘suspected’ that I had torn part of the cartilage on the outer side of my knee; it isn’t possible to see cartilage on an x-ray, but his clue was that the spacing between the bones was inconsistent, and he could also feel something moving around inside my knee cap, which he thought was probably a piece of cartilage which had torn or detached.  He recommended surgery to remove the cartilage from the outer side of my knee, and added that if this surgery wasn’t undertaken, I would be unable to walk and using a wheelchair by the time I reached the age of 20.  It seemed a situation with everything to gain and nothing to lose, so the consent papers were signed and surgery went ahead.  I was then 10 years old.