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I live with Juvenile Axial Spondyloarthritis (JAS), and I am honoured to be a recipient of the STEM Without Limits Scholarship through the Take a Pain Check Young Scholars Program. For a long time, I believed there were two versions of my future. One was the path I had always imagined pursuing higher education, becoming involved in research, and working toward a career in healthcare. The other was the uncertainty that came with living with a chronic illness. I was diagnosed w

Arthritis isn’t just joint pain. It comes with several other symptoms and sometimes comorbidities. People often assume arthritis is inevitable - something that happens only to the elderly. While there is some truth to that, it is not the whole truth. I am in my mid-20s and I live with a type of inflammatory arthritis called axial spondyloarthritis (AS) and also have fibromyalgia, a comorbid chronic pain condition. Osteoarthritis, the type of joint pain typically associated wi

My name is Daniela. I’m 18 years old, and I was officially diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) at 13, but I have been living with symptoms since I was five. When I was younger, I developed painful, inflamed rashes on my legs that made it hard to walk or even stand for more than a minute at a time. I went through years of medical appointments, bloodwork, biopsies, and specialist visits, but no one could give me a clear answer. My test results often pointed towar

Being diagnosed with Lupus Nephritis for coming up on 2 years soon, I’ve faced many struggles. And while many of them have been caused physically by my illness, some of the hardest struggles I've faced have come due to misconceptions and predispositions against chronic illness. I was diagnosed with Lupus close to the end of grade 10. I started showing symptoms in March and would quickly worsen after that. I was unable to go to school and was quickly cut off from all my norma

When it comes to your health, it wouldn’t come as much of a shock if you’ve been down this kind of road before; the kind with random stops and sometimes-unexpected traffic, the kind where you might find yourself all of a sudden pushing ninety clicks to a destination you won’t stay at for very long. For me and my journey, it was no exception! For me, it took repeated returns to specialists I had already seen. Specialists who were trained for a particular issue, whether I had i

As I sat waiting for my most recent medical tests, my anxiety amped up. I was required to fast and wasn’t even allowed to drink water in preparation. And of course, I needed to get an IV. When I was younger, I wasn’t bothered by needles, bloodwork, or IVs. But as my medical care for Vasculitis and Crohn’s has required more interventions over the years, my veins have also become more scarred. Previously, this has meant multiple “attempts” since my veins are tricky to get on a

Life has a way of testing us in ways we never imagined. For me, that test came in the form of a chronic, invisible illness called...

Being chronically ill has many challenges. There's the obvious part of it, where you feel exhausted and drained, living in a body that...

Receiving the Take a Pain Check STEM Without Limits Scholarship has reminded me of just how far I’ve come, not just as a student or...

This morning, I realized something I've never contemplated before—probably because I've never had a reason to. I'm not an athlete, so the...

The mental health struggles of arthritis

Unlike most people with both fibromyalgia and arthritis, my fibromyalgia was diagnosed several years before my arthritis. I was diagnosed...