I just recently learned a little bit about Juvenile arthritis. In learning about this disease, unfortunately there was a face to go along with it.  There is a little girl I met who was diagnosed at a very young age with Juvenile arthritis.  Her name is Faith, appropriately.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this disease, as I was, it is basically this:  Juvenile arthritis (JA) refers to any form of arthritis or an arthritis-related condition that develops in children or teenagers who are less than 18 years of age. Common Symptoms of Juvenile Arthritis include pain, swelling, tenderness and stiffness of joints, causing limited range of motion.  It can also cause joint contracture, which results from holding a painful joint in a flexed position for an extended period. More so,it can cause damage to joint cartilage and bone leading to joint deformity and impaired use of the joint. As well as altered growth of bone and joints leading to short stature.

So, Faith.  She just turned 9 and has been suffering from Juvenile arthritis for years now.  She can’t participate in many sports because her movements are limited due to severe pain caused by this disease.  She loves to swim and ride horses, which is easier on her joints.  Faith is currently undergoing a new treatment which is very expensive and includes an at home shot every weekend that is administered by her parents.  While this treatment does have some side affects, the good outweigh the not so good.  Her father told me that this shot now gives her the ability to crawl. Yes, crawl. She is perfectly able to walk and move about somewhat like you and I, but crawl, not recently.  She has a one year old little brother who she has not been able to crawl around with.  After getting the first dose of this treatment, she got down on her hands and knees and looked up at her father and said…

…Look daddy, now I can crawl with Aaron.

Ok, I have two children of my own, so I’m a bit emotional when it comes to this stuff.  Hearing his story brought me to tears.  I decided I had to help.

After discussing it with the Two Parts Sugar crew, we decided to take the first step.  We contacted our local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation to see what we could do to help.  We will be meeting with them later this week to see if we can arrange something for the upcoming walk in Irvine this May.  We are hoping to use our cupcakes to raise money for the foundation and for our dear little Faith.  Pictured above are some cupcakes with different logos representative of the Arthritis foundation. We also included our own addition, the butterfly, which represents our little Faith. Please wish us luck in our quest to do so.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under community, cupcakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.