I felt so alone: RHONJ star Rachel Fuda shares heartbreaking memories of childhood arthr

Even D-level stars are just like us! Real Housewives of New Jersey star Rachel Fuda recently revealed a difficult lifelong malady: she suffers from arthritis, and has since she was a child. In honor of Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Month, she shared some insight on what that was like.

She called the disease a “lifelong physical and emotional battle,” per People. Arthritis, by the way, is (very simply) a swelling and tenderness around joints, but there are many, many variations of the disease.

“It’s the type of chronic illness that affects children and adults so greatly, but many of us with arthritis suffer with [it] in silence. I’m here to use my voice to change that; to let people know just how difficult life with arthritis can be on a daily basis and to let others suffering with it know that they are not alone.”

Her arthritic symptoms started when she was just four years old. After a tumble off some monkey bars, she was taken to the hospital with what doctors thought was a garden-variety broken leg.

When doctors took the cast off a few months later, instead of a healed leg they discovered it had ballooned to four times its original size.

“I was having an arthritis flare-up and it wasn’t diagnosed yet. They put me on just a small dose of Naproxen, [an anti-inflammatory drug designed to reduce inflammation and swelling], and then it just went away. And I went into remission for years.”

The disease resurfaced with a vengeance when she was in the fifth grade. Her official diagnosis? Systemic juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

“I was out playing with my friends and I just felt so tired. And I had this crazy-high fever that lasted two weeks. My mom was traveling for business and I kept telling my dad, ‘Dad, my body hurts so bad. I can’t walk up the stairs. I’m sweating constantly. Something is wrong.'”

This time around was much, much worse than her previous bout.

“Once again, I was having an arthritis flare-up, only this time, it was horrible. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t get myself dressed, I couldn’t brush my hair, I couldn’t shower myself. It was so incredibly life-altering for me.”

Doctors gave her Prednisone, a steroid used to cover a large swath of inflammatory diseases. She was taking up to 150 mgs of the drug a day to alleviate her symptoms. The average dose is between 5 and 60 mgs a day.

Between the medicine and weight gain from the steroids, she was miserable. Other drugs didn’t seem to work, either. It made things very difficult for her during her teenage years.

“Being an adolescent pre-teen is such a hard time in a kid’s life to begin with. Your body is already going through so many changes and then to add this on top of it? It was torture.”

Because she was so young, she felt like she didn’t know how to deal with things and “felt so alone.”

“So many children with chronic illness feel the same way because as much as it is a physical battle, it’s emotionally and mentally equally as difficult to want to be like everyone else, but be so different at the same time.”

Eventually, she found a drug that helped. She also joined the Arthritis Foundation, which had a support group for kids.

“It gave me a safe place to talk about my feelings and to connect with kids my age who felt the same way. I felt empathy for the first time from someone my age. It made such a positive impact in my life and I’m still in touch with a lot of people I met during that time.”

Her life now is of course very different. She decided to get off all drugs to have children, but then the symptoms came back.

She stressed the importance of having a place to go and people to talk to when you have a life long disease.

“The flare-ups can happen at any time, so I’m always going to need to have a plan in place. I’m always going to need to manage and work it into my life. Even now as I walk around, I have heat patches on my arms to help me. And you just have to take a deep breath and remind yourself that you can manage it. Because if you don’t manage it, it’ll manage you.”

The Real Housewives of New Jersey just completed its 13th season last month. All episodes are available to stream.

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