My mother receives Arthritis Today magazine, which she shares with me. After I scan any articles I’m interested in I pass them on to a young man we’ve befriended at one of our local convenience stores. His name is Matthew and at the age of 24 he’s already been diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and has had a hip replacement.
I’m currently working through some old issues I came across while cleaning out my stacks of magazines and I saw an article about Joy Ross and her two young daughters. Joy was diagnosed at age 3 with Rheumatoid Arthritis and later with Uveitis, which robbed her of her sight. She is now totally blind. Unbelievably both of her daughters have been diagnosed with RA and her youngest also has Uveitis.
Because the article was a few years old, I thought I’d check out the Internet and see if I could find any current information regarding their conditions and I discovered she has a YouTube channel! You can check it out here.
What an unbelievable inspiration this woman is! What a tremendous testimony to the power of positivity!
Below are two videos of Joy walking with her guide dog Antonia a few blocks to her local Starbucks. Just the thought of walking beside and crossing traffic while being completely blind frightens me to death! I think I’d just stay home and make my own coffee! But that’s the point. She’s striving to live life to the fullest in spite of her blindness and encouraging others to do the same.
These videos really inspire me to be thankful for all that I have and to not complain.
In this first video Joy and Antonia are alone during the daytime.
In the second video she is with her daughter, in the dark, walking on ice and snow.
