Alice Peterson

Alice Peterson was a promising tennis player from a young age. Alice loved tennis. It was her passion. She played on the UK junior tennis circuit and won a tennis scholarship to study at a university in the US.

Alice started to notice pain in her right hand and put the discomfort down to a sports injury. The pain seemed to come and go... until she was playing in the finals of a tournament and couldn’t even hold the racquet properly. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at 18 years of age and never played tennis again.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic progressive and disabling autoimmune disorder affecting 0.8% of the adult UK population. It is a systemic disease which means that it can affect the whole body and internal organs such as lungs, heart and eyes. It can happen to anyone and is not a hereditary disease. Arthritis can develop at any age, it is most common to be diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis between the ages of 30-50 and is three times more common in women than in men.

For Alice, her rheumatoid arthritis has been so severe that she has needed help getting up in the mornings, dressing, walking, her mother has even had to feed her. She says, “It was like being a child again. Also, I was at an age when I should have moved away from home. Instead I felt a terrible burden to my parents.’ Alice was taking a cocktail of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs but nothing touched the pain. From the age of 18-33 she has had to have nine major joint replacements.

Alice has written 'A Will To Win', an inspiring story about her tennis-mad childhood and the battle to live with this degenerative disease. She shares her memories of growing up in the eighties, the thrill of getting a tennis scholarship to the US followed by the shocking diagnosis, the all consuming pain and how she came to rebuild her life around it.

Alice is a full-time writer, public speaker, and Trustee of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, www.rheumatoid.org.uk. In these roles she continues to raise awareness of RA, particularly in relation to how it affects the lives of young sufferers.