Girls Rule
"Girls Rule is about confidence, no matter what happens--good, bad, or otherwise."
Kate Pollard of Winston-Salem, NC, has no intention of letting Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA) stop her in her tracks. In fact, she's planning to make some tracks as a young entrepreneur.
Kate's dad, Mike, says, "Kate was diagnosed weith JRA as a toddler. It was sad to watch a two-year-old run like an old lady." Her knees were swollen and the joints in her hands were puffy with inflammation. The simplest of daily tasks, like walking up the stairs, or even just holding hands with her parents, would make her cry with pain.
Then Kate's parents, Bonnie and Mike, found Duke Children's Hospital & Health Center. Kate started a rigorous treatment regimen that eventually included a biologic agent called etanercept (Enbrel). It calmed the inflammation, which attacks the tissues lining her joints. And it reduces her risk of developing irreversible deformities.
Today, at age nine, Kate's a spunky horseback rider and enthusiastic surfer. But it's her talent for drawing that was the impetus for a business that may one day change her life.
GirlsRuleOnline.com, launched early in 2008, showcases Kate's upbeat artwork on t-shirts and other items. While the father-daughter duo hopes it will be profitable and help them raise money for other girls facing illness, struggling to pay for college or enduring harsh conditions like homelessness, Mike says the real goal is to inspire.
"Girls Rule is about confidence, no matter what happens--good, bad, or otherwise. It's about being strong in spite of adversity. When you're a parent, and your child is facing devasting illness, you think, 'What am I going to do? What's my commitment to my child?' For my wife, Bonnie, and me, the answer was that it was our job to make sure Kate has an extraordinary life. "This business is a way to help her understand that life is a big playing field, he added. "We have to be comfortable playing on it, no matter what challenges we face."
That rule will be no easy feat for Kate, now president and "chief design queen" of Girls Rule. JRA is one of the most common chronic childhood illnesses--occurring nearly as often as juvenile diabetes--but receives little recognition, and much less funding for research. There are less than 200 doctors in the United States specializing in its treatment. Fortunately for the Pollards, some of those doctors are right here at Duke Children's.
As one of the 300,000 kids living with JRA in the U.S., Kate copes daily with a disease that is often difficult to diagnose and hard to treat. She takes powerful medications like methotrexate with potentially serious side effects, as well as periodic painful flare-ups in her joints.
"There's a lot we still don't know about the prognosis of juvenile arthritis," says Stacy Ardoin, MD, a pediatric rheumatologist at Duke. "At this time, we can't predict whether Kate will grow out of it, or whether JRA will be a lifelong problem for her. But the increasing number of medications proven effective in treating JRA, including biologic medications like etanercept, now offer Kate a lot of promise for more normal life."
