Famous People with Rheumatoid Arthritis
While no celebrity has become the spokesperson for rheumatoid arthritis as Michael J. Fox has done for Parkinson’s, there are several RA sufferers who are well known. One was the great French painter Renoir. The disease devastated him and he ended up unable to walk at all and was confined to a wheelchair the last years of his life. No one knows what masterpieces of art the world lost because RA robbed Renoir of his ability to paint normally. He managed to clutch a brush in hands so deformed they were described as looking like a bird’s claws but this certainly impacted his output. At the end the disease he had fought for 30 years reduced him to a shadow of himself weighing little more than one hundred pounds.
Another famous RA patient was the amazing comic talent, Lucille Ball. She developed the disease in her teens and could not even walk for a couple of years. She managed to work through the pain and become an actress after enduring experimental and costly treatments that did not work. Later she underwent grueling physical therapy to even her leg length when the disease went into remission.
Another actress known to have RA is Aida Turturro who plays Janice on the series “The Sopranos”, the sister of Tony Soprano. She has dealt with the disease since she was a child, a victim of JRA or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Actor and composer Bob Mortimer is also an RA patient who uses steroids to control his illness. Celebrity host of “Scream Play” Matt Iseman also lives with RA.
One sufferer is remarkable in her physical accomplishments despite having rheumatoid arthritis since 1995. Forty-something Tina Wesson has RA and still managed to beat out all contestants in the grueling show “Survivor II” in the Australian outback. In doing so, arthritis or not, she managed to win one million dollars. Doing this at all is notable but doing it with a chronic and often debilitating illness is amazing.
In 1967, famed South African surgeon Dr. Christian Barnard stood the world on its end by performing the first human heart transplant on a retired dentist. Even at that time Barnard was dealing with the effects of RA and the disease forced him into retiring in 1983 when he lost too much dexterity to operate. Barnard has had the illness most of his adult life.
Well known film and television actress Kathleen Turner, star of “The War of the Roses” and “Serial Mom” to name just a tiny part of her work, also has RA. It has been reported that she has said her RA pain has been bad enough that she has considered suicide.
Carol and Richard Eustice are famous because of their RA. The couple both serve as the guides for the very extensive and informative About.com web pages on arthritis. This site also contains their blog about their struggles with the disease and offers a helpful free newsletter on arthritis. Their audience includes the 1.3 million Americans now suffering from RA, both famous and ordinary everyday people.
Resources
General RA information: arthritis.about.com/
Information about famous persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis: answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=532004 www.health24.com/medical/
www.realitytvworld.com/index/articles/
www.imdb.com/
www.buzzle.com/articles/famous-people-with-arthritis.html