Growing up, Isabella Boles never met another kid with arthritis. She endured injections, infusions, pills and pain on a proverbial island, where everyone else got to hop and skip around while she laboured behind with her cane.
Juvenile arthritis is rare enough that most of the 25,000 children in Canada who have some form of it are siloed. Without intervention, they’re unlikely to ever meet and share coping strategies, medication recommendations or kind words.