‘There are days when I can do backflip and other days when I can’t walk’
“Coming up to my sixth birthday, I started getting pains and I thought they were growing pains and so did my Mam. But they got so bad, it came to the stage where I couldn’t even pull my trousers down when I tried to use the toilet.”
His mother brought him to the doctor the day he tried to grip a yoghurt and it fell right out of his hand.
He was told it was “something viral” and sent home. Danny developed a red rash that stayed with him.
One day in school, he started to feel very hot, his joints started to swell and he was sent home.
His mother brought him to Temple St Children’s Hospital where Danny says he was something of a medical enigma before being finally diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis after six months.
He was given Methotrexate, also used as a chemotherapy drug, which his mother injected weekly into his stomach.
“After a while I started vomiting from it, so they started me on new medication which is injected into my leg twice a week.”
Now aged 11, Danny, from North Strand in Dublin, says there are “days when I can do backflip and other days when I can’t walk”.
Arthritis forced him to cut back on sport and he now concentrates on kick-boxing and swimming. “I keep active up to my limit,” he says.
Danny’s wish, if he had the ear of the Taoiseach, is for greater access to paediatric rheumatologists for the hundreds of other children whose quality of life is compromised by arthritis.
“I would like to tell Brian Cowen that I get to see a doctor every three months and I feel that that is not enough for me, not to mention those kids who have arthritis and have yet to get to see a doctor.”
