Welcome to the website for Kate’s JAR Fund!
JAR stands for Juvenile Arthritis & Rheumatology. Our daughter, Kate, was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (JRA) in 2006 at just 18 months old. Since that time, Kate has endured countless tests, steroid injections in multiple joints and even a colonoscopy and endoscopy. At the same time, our family has been given a gift - the staff and physicians of Duke Children’s Hospital.
Our family
When you have a child with a chronic illness, it is easy to focus on all that is hard about the diagnosis – the weekly shots of a chemotherapy drug, the resulting suppressed immunity and increased illness, or simply the doubt that lingers when your child says she is in pain. You can question yourself constantly about whether or not this symptom or that movement is related to the disease or just part of being a kid. It can be hard to separate the normal worries and foibles of childhood from the impact of JRA. As parents, we can accept these concerns as part of our joyous job. What we don’t want is for Kate to fall victim to these same worries and, thereby, become a victim of JRA. Instead, we want her to feel part of the solution, and we know her doctors at Duke want the same for her.
Kate’s JAR Fund is our small way of paying back just a bit of the many gifts of encouragement and care we’ve received from her physicians at Duke. It is an official fund of Duke Children’s Hospital in the Department of Rheumatology, administered by Kate’s primary physician and the co-chair of the department, Dr. Egla Rabinvoich.
We hope you will take a moment to explore the site and find out more about Kate, JRA and Duke Children’s Hospital. Please join us in supporting children like Kate who live with this chronic disease.
