Cassie and her puppet friends are visiting the valley this week.
“We’re on tour through the Okanagan with our puppet show,” puppeteer Liz Kirkland said. “So the show is about Cassie, telling her friends about arthritis, how she handles it, how her friends handle it and how they all learn from it.”
Cassie and Friends Society for Children with Juvenile Arthritis and Other Rheumatic Diseases is a Canada-wide charity located in Vancouver.
Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) affects about three in 1,000 Canadian children.
“It was started several years ago by Dave and Debbie Porte. Their daughter was diagnosed with JIA and the puppet show is an awareness show,” Kirkland said. “There’s actually quite a few kids all over Canada –over 24,000 kids — who have JIA and other rheumatic diseases.”
Eden Ennis, a six-year-old from West Kelowna, is one of those children.
“When Eden was two-years-old she fell and hit her knee and it was really swollen,” recalled Christina Ennis, Eden’s mother. “Hours later, she couldn’t walk. We went to the hospital and got a blood test and that told us that Eden had Juvenile Arthritis.”
Eden had to have knee surgery at the age of two-and-half-years old, to drain the fluids. And thus began a daily routine to ensure Eden’s arthritis doesn’t flare up.
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“Eden takes daily anti-inflammatories and pain killers,” Ennis said. “She’s also on chemotherapy drugs and so that helps manage the disease.”
Ennis remembers the diagnosis as a frightening time. That is, until the family found the right doctor.
“At the beginning, it was terrifying. But, because we had excellent care right away, there was a feeling of calm, that you know it’s going to be OK,” Ennis said. “We’ve been really lucky. Through the consistent care of Dr. Gross at the Penticton clinic, Eden has done awesome and she hasn’t had a flare up in over a year.”
The only problem is Dr. Kathy Gross retired last month and there is no replacement.
“It’s going to affect us because any time Eden needs to go for an appointment now, which is every three months for a checkup, we would need to go to B.C. Children’s Hospital. Or, if she has a flare up, we need to go down pretty much right away,” Ennis said. “It’s disruptive to our family, it’s going to be a financial burden and we’re not the only family affected.”
In fact, there are about 200 other patients in the Okanagan that are losing their doctor.
“Eden’s been able to live a full life because she has proper medication, she has proper checkups,” Ennis said. “She is able to play soccer, go swimming. She can walk without any problems and that is really our desire as parents — to see our little one grow up and be able to do everything every other child can do.”
The Cassie and Friends puppet show tour began in Kelowna on Jan. 21 and will finish in Peachland on Jan. 25.
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