When you meet Kate Sousek, you notice first her soft brown pixie haircut framing a heart-shaped face, accented by thin gold hoop earrings and a perfect complexion. It’s not until she picks up a sandwich that the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affecting her hands is apparent. Still, those slim fingers with the faint scars can type 92 words per minute without pain.

When you meet Kate Sousek, you notice first her soft brown pixie haircut framing a heart-shaped face, accented by thin gold hoop earrings and a perfect complexion. It’s not until she picks up a sandwich that the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affecting her hands is apparent. Still, those slim fingers with the faint scars can type 92 words per minute without pain. As with most children diagnosed with RA, no one believed that the gifted child who played sports along with her classmates could have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The reason her wrists didn’t work very well and hurt, they insisted, must be something else. Her father sought answers that weren’t there. The wheat farmer couldn’t accept that his oldest child had been struck with a chronic disease; especially one usually associated with the elderly.

As a child, Kate faced the apathy of unsympathetic teachers, the taunting of uninformed classmates and multiple surgeries for a congenital hip condition unrelated to her rheumatoid arthritis. Today she is a self-confident, focused and mature woman. At college (she aced her ACT exam) she credits her experience as social chairman at UNL’s Able residence hall with allowing her personality to develop and her self-esteem to grow. Her college experience also widened her world to the assistance that is available to students with a disability. During college she benefited from designated note takers in class and was allowed to use a computer to take exams – a very different experience than high school where she was forced to write her own notes by hand and run a mile in PE class. After earning a degree in journalism at UNL, Kate worked for a time at a small town paper, married her fellow karaoke singer and dance partner, Don, and acquired a Labrador mix pup named Rogue. She now works full time for an immigration-processing contractor and is setting her sights on pharmacy school in 2010. “I’ve always had an interest in science and I’ve learned so much with all the medications that I’ve taken for my own disease over the years, it makes sense to make it a career,” she said. She is also inspired by her rheumatologist, Dr. Amy Garwood, who takes time to explain medications and how they work in the body. Kate’s attendance at Camp Spirit, a summer camp for children with arthritis, led to her involvement with the Arthritis Foundation of Nebraska. She credits the organization with supporting the research necessary to produce the pharmaceuticals that have allowed for her productive life. “I’m convinced that the drugs that are available to me are due to the funds raised by the Arthritis Foundation for research,” Kate says.

And, she has embraced the organization as a volunteer, chairing the foundation’s Lincoln walk. Besides pharmacy school on the horizon, joint replacement surgery is likely, probably yet this year at the Mayo Clinic. She’s already beaten osteoporosis, due to a two-year course of a drug that increases bone density and strength to help prevent fractures. Kate is used to serious challenges – pain, stiffness, disfigurement and ignorance. She’s been facing them since she was 12. Luckily, she’s also had many gifts, including a supportive family and spouse, the opportunities that she found at UNL and the Arthritis Foundation that is available to help her live her life, challenges and all.