Battle with arthritis leads to honor for Williston Park woman

Noah Manskar
Lisa Mueller of Williston Park is the adult honoree for the 2017 Walk to Cure Arthritis, which will be held on May 20. (Photo from Long Island Arthritis Foundation)

Going against her doctor’s orders turned out to be a good move for Lisa Mueller.

When she was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in 1990, Mueller, then 16, was told to avoid physical activity to keep the disease at bay. But after she started college at St. John’s University, she started exercising regularly and doing what she’d otherwise normally do, she said.

Doctors originally said Mueller would never have children and would have her knees and hips replaced by the time she turned 40. Now 42, the Williston Park resident has three daughters and hasn’t had any joint replacements, she said.

“As long as it didn’t make the pain worse, I just kind of pushed through,” Mueller said. “And that’s kind of the philosophy now, but it’s not what the doctors were telling you 27 years ago.”

Mueller has worked over the years to help spread the word that arthritis is not just “an older person’s disease,” she said.

She has led a team in the Long Island Walk to Cure Arthritis for the past 15 years, raising between $3,000 and $4,000 annually for the Long Island Arthritis Foundation.

Her efforts led her to be chosen as the adult honoree for this year’s event on May 20 at Belmont Lake State Park, a platform for Mueller to give arthritis a human face, she said.

“Here is someone who has worked hard to get where she is and has tried a lot of different things along the way,” Robin Pierre, the Long Island Arthritis Foundation’s development manager, said. “She’s a good role model.”

Taking control of her own health has helped Mueller manage a disease that brings pain to everyday tasks, she said.

Rheumatoid arthritis causes the body’s immune system to attack joints, causing swelling around the joints that leads to pain and permanent damage if untreated, according to the national Arthritis Foundation, a research and advocacy group. The disease affects about 1.5 million people in the U.S.

Mueller followed the doctors’ instructions after first getting her diagnosis, she said. She stopped playing high school lacrosse and became more “sedentary,” leading her to gain weight before heading to St. John’s, she said.

It was there that she decided to stop letting arthritis limit her so much, she said. She started exercising regularly and eating better, causing her to lose some weight, which helped relieve some pain, she said.

“I wanted to feel good and I didn’t really care what the diagnosis was,” Mueller said. “It wasn’t going to define me.”

New treatments also helped — only one of the four medicines Mueller now takes regularly existed when she was diagnosed, she said.

Mueller went on to get a master’s degree in speech pathology from Northern Arizona University and worked as a speech pathologist before her daughters were born, she said.

Her passion for physical fitness led to her current part-time job as a Team Beachbody fitness coach, she said.

Mueller’s arthritis prevents her from doing certain things with her daughters,  Isabella, 8, Jocelyn, 6, and Sofia Elena, who will soon turn 4.

Holding them up on the monkey bars at a playground, tying their shoes and holding their hands cause her pain, she said, as do other repetitive tasks such as writing or scrubbing surfaces.

Mueller said she wants to raise awareness about juvenile arthritis, which affects nearly 300,000 children younger than 16 in the U.S., according to the Arthritis Foundation.

Many don’t realize arthritis affects people of all ages, she said, and kids with the disease on Long Island can wait six to nine months to see a specialist because there’s a shortage of juvenile rheumatologists in the New York City area.

“Amazingly there’s all these kids with this disease and nobody realizes that these kids have to learn to walk again,” Mueller said.

Nearly 500,000 Long Islanders, including about 3,000 children, have some kind of arthritis, Pierre said.

Being an honoree at this year’s Walk to Cure Arthritis will give Mueller a chance to share her story of dealing with arthritis from a young age, which can offer hope for kids currently struggling with the disease, she said.

“We find that that can help immensely for someone who pershaps was newly diagnosed, to know that they’re not alone,” Pierre said.

Mueller’s Walk to Cure Arthritis Team is holding a fundraising event on April 7 at 7:30 p.m. at Little Art Studio in Williston Park.

Because it is an “invisible disease,” many people have trouble understanding how much arthritis affects Mueller’s daily life, she said. But that hasn’t stopped her from living as actively as she can.

“You can still do whatever you want to do in life,” she said. “You may do it a little differently but you can still have a wonderfully rich life.”

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