Arthritis is commonly linked with old age but for 13-year-old Sam Hellewell coping with the condition is a daily fact of life.

Sam, of Buttershaw, Bradford, is one of more than 14,000 children nationwide affected by the crippling condition which not only causes physical symptoms of swollen and painful joints but can also cause psychological trauma.

Sam was diagnosed when she was one with juvenile chronic arthritis which has affected her knees, ankles, several toes and fingers, shoulder and even an eye.

She wears splints on her joints at night preventing her from walking and on a bad day is unable to move.

Her situation is being highlighted as part of the Arthritis Research Campaign's education week which is focusing on problems faced by adolescents coping with pain and disability as well as sticking to rigorous medication and treatment schedules.

The charity is calling for more specialist centres to be set up to help youngsters and has expressed concern about discrimination in the job market.

Sam, a pupil at Woodside Middle School, said she was determined to prevent the condition as far as possible affecting her life and was setting her sights on being a vet.

She had become used to the problems it brought but it was sometimes a barrier.

"It does get in the way of some things," she said.

"It stops me from doing PE and having long walks with my friends and I can't play in half the games they do. I am positive and determined about it."

Her mum, Nikki, said medication, including some steroid injections, kept the worst symptoms at bay but the drugs did have side-effects which had affected her liver.

Some children with arthritis grew out of it but the family were dealing with it day by day and not thinking too far ahead.

Nikki said: "On a bad day it affects her mobility. She will stiffen up and has to be lifted out of bed into a warm bath.

"On a good day she walks from the house to school and you wouldn't know anything is wrong with her. She has always had to put up with the pain and has the sort of personality that she doesn't get down too much but at times it is difficult."

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