Watching a child take their first steps is a special moment for new mums and dads, but when one-year-old Ella’s parents spotted she was dragging one foot behind the other the explanation they received was something completely unexpected.
Looking back at a video of her daughter as she shuffled along at a family party, Samantha recalls the moment she realised something was not quite right.
“I had a look at her ankle,” she says. “It couldn’t move sideways, up or down. Children’s bones are quite soft. We wondered if she had broken it and it hadn’t set correctly.”
But soon her knee was swelling and the walk became a limp.
A family friend was the first to mention arthritis, though Samantha, from Kippax, near Leeds, said she struggled to comprehend the thought at first.
“I’d never heard children could get it – to me arthritis was wear and tear when you’re old,” she sayd.
But, after learning more about the condition, she said by the time they saw an NHS physio “we were able to say, ‘we think it’s this and this is what we want to do’.”