B.C.

A year and a half ago our daughter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. Her pain and psoriasis started about a year before that but between misdiagnosis and chalking things up to growing pains, we had no idea JIA was even a thing. It all came to a head after a…

I don’t know if there can be a ‘typical’ journey for a young child who receives a Juvenile Arthritis diagnosis. But this is Linden’s story so far. When Linden got sick at 18 months old, we thought it was just a cold. But then came an unusual rash and his…

Hello, my name is Grace Parker Palidwor. I was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis when I was 18 months old. In the first few years of my diagnosis, I don’t remember much except that I believed that every child was exactly like me. I believed that all my friends woke…

A vital part of the work we do at Cassie + Friends stems from our involvement in important research in the pediatric rheumatic (PR) disease community. Over the past decade, we’ve helped endow a research chair, fund a new international post-doc, build one of only three PR labs in Canada, launch…

Meet Oliver! A vibrant young boy with autoinflammatory disease living in Williams Lake, BC! Oliver has always been the type of child that brings joy to everyone around him. We couldn’t go to the grocery store without the smiling baby drawing everyone near. His first year of life was good.…

2018 marked Cassie and Friends’ 11th year participating in the Scotiabank Charity Challenge and each and every year we end the race in the same way – saying, wow, this was the best year ever. We can never top this!   Every year, thanks to friends like you, we are…

In September of 2014, summer ended and our three daughters headed to back school – Anika into grade 4, Jaylene to grade 3 and Claire starting preschool. With school routines starting up again, life seemed back to normal. Then, out of the blue, Jaylene began complaining about a rash she…