December 2007

Young Athlete is Face of Juvenile Arthritis

Seven-year-old Jessica Leonard is hanging from the banister in her North Bend home. “I’m a monkey,” she announces, jumping from the stairway to the couch and back onto the floor, dancing with her two younger sisters, Hannah and Sheyenne. She has a swollen and stiff joint in her left elbow, but no one would know it by looking at her. “It doesn’t hurt,” she says breezily.

The joyful whirling dervish with the “Life is Good” T-shirt is the face of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis as this year’s Arthritis Foundation Jingle Bell Run honoree. As she did last year, Jessica and her “Team Jessica” supporters will run in the Children’s Run with the Elves to raise money for a cure.

It did hurt – terribly – when Jessica first showed symptoms of Polyarticular (many joints) Rheumatoid Arthritis more than four years ago. Her mother, Kathleen Leonard, doesn’t know how she stood it, as it affected almost every joint in her body. Medical treatment and monitoring by pediatric rheumatologists at Children’s Hospital have limited the flare-ups to only two in the last four years, which Leonard considers “a miracle.”

Presently, Jessica receives weekly shorts of methotrexate, administered by her mother at home, while her father, Shawn Leonard, applies ice. “Sheyenne holds my hand when I scream,” Jessica says matter-of-factly.

Other than that, arthritis has not slowed down this athletic little girl. She takes therapeutic riding lessons and participates in a different sport every season – basketball (where mom was the coach), soccer and softball, all of which she loves. In the space between soccer and basketball seasons last month, she and Sheyenne took karate. In the last few years, before she got so busy with sports, she took ballet, jazz and tap dance. She enjoys PE and art at Opstad Elementary School in North Bend.

She is proud not to have missed any school because of her arthritis, except for the occasional doctor’s appointment. Her mother credits allergy testing and elimination of wheat, cow’s milk, soy, eggs, almonds and peanuts from her daughter’s diet for her general good health and reduced arthritis symptoms. “The foods she’s allergic to cause inflammation, and that affects the joints,” Leonard says.

“She keeps track of her own diet. She won’t touch anything she can’t have,” Leonard adds.

Does she believe there will one day be a cure?

Jessica doesn’t know what “cure” means, and her mother explains that one day there may be medicine that will make the arthritis go away forever. “Yes,” Jessica answers, and goes back to jumping from the couch to the floor, spinning in a hula hoop and dodging her little white dog and her sisters around the living room floor.

– Wenda Reed

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