More Stories Return to Main Menu USC athlete endures pain of arthritis, keeps moving by Dawn Brazell Special to The Catalyst When Kristy McPherson wakes in the morning, she instantly knows the weather without even a peak outside. She just senses it in her joints. If it s cold and rainy, the pain s intense. For someone with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, this is just life.
Patients learn to work around the pain, to go about their daily lives.
What s a bit unusual about McPherson is that her daily life includes competing at the collegiate level as a golfer at the University of South Carolina. McPherson knows better than most golfers about how to lower a handicap. She s been doing it since she was 11, when her life went from that of a normal, athletic sixth-grader to that of a homebound child desperately ill. It all happened within an hour. I was walking home from school and walking across the yard when my brother tackled me.