This week’s episode features Naomi Abrahams, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa, who lives with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis. The episode starts off by Naomi talking about how life felt like when being misdiagnosed for 3 years. She brings Natasha along her journey to when her symptoms started with joint swelling and pain in her hips that then moved to her elbows. Eventually, she wasn’t able to brush her teeth or eat food without pain. Her world changed and she had frequent visits to the dentist and had tons of MRIs. This led her to finally figure out her personal medication and treatment journey. Moreover, Naomi explains how she never experienced pediatric care but was experiencing symptoms when she was 15. On her 18th birthday, she was given her new diagnosis in which she felt as though she was “thrown into the adult world”. Additionally, Natasha and Naomi both discuss the pros and cons of having a rheumatoid factor negative vs positive one. They also discuss the similarities they had in terms of medications they had been on (DMARDS and biologics). Following that, they continue the conversation by talking about their own physiotherapy pathway, specifically what it’s like to do physiotherapy in a flare up and the financial aspects of getting billed through insurance. They discuss the MRI vs infusion fatigue, moving out to university with arthritis, and hair loss/growth with medications. Then, they get into the fun stuff like how Naomi told her boyfriend that she had arthritis and how he now supports her. Natasha and Naomi discuss how they met each other specifically through the Choice Research Lab, patient engagement in research and how important patient partners are. Last but not least, they end off the episode discussing their experience together at the CBC Ottawa Radio station, filming the CBC documentary and more!  

CBC documentary and article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/juvenile-idiopathic-arthritis-podcast-creator-network-cbc-1.6614184CBC radio segment: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15943512-juvenile-idiopathic-arthritis 

Check out Naomi's socials:  Instagram: @naomiabrahams  

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Growing Pains, Copyright, 2018, Alessia Cara