My poor old creaky bones: Meet the millennial women with arthritis

Although it's commonly thought of as an old person's disease, arthritis affects 27,000 people under the age of 25 in Britain, including Olivia Campbell

Nicolle Okoren is one of many young sufferers (Nicolle Okoren)

My name is Olivia and I have rheumatoid arthritis. As I write this article my fingers and wrists scream in pain while I repeat the same keyboard motion over and over. They will hurt like hell later. I was 14 when I realised something wasn’t right with my body. It was the beginning of 2011, and the aching in my foot that had started months before was getting worse and worse until I could ignore it no longer.

My middle finger on my right hand was normal, until one day it wasn’t. This was when the comments started. Offhand remarks from my mum saying I walked like an old woman, while people started casually asking me if there was something wrong with my legs. “No,” I’d tell them, unsure myself what was happening.

When you hear the word arthritis you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is something that only effects our elderly population. A word that evokes images of stiff joints and creacking bones and stereotypes that are given to people who’ve reached a ripe old age, not women in the prime of their lives.