Allan, Barbara D.

At age 25 Barbara Allan became one of the over 9.1 million people in the United States with an autoimmune-type arthritis. Her arthritis was triggered by a bout of bacterial dysentery caused by eating food contaminated with a bacterium called Shigella. Reactive arthritis was the name given to her condition. In many respects, it is very similar to rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, she eventually got well using methods proven to work for rheumatoid arthritis. The arthritis came on very suddenly and left her in chronic, overwhelming pain that often made it difficult to walk even a few steps without p...