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By: Gretchen Sparling
Photography: Stephen Karlisch for Karlisch Kids
Date Posted: 1/14/2010
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Mom Next Door: Janet St. James
OCCUPATION: Reporter on WFAA-TV’s news team assigned to the health and medical news beat PERSONAL STATS: The native Texan (and University of Texas at Austin graduate) first found herself in front of a news camera 20 years ago at a station in Abilene and then in Oklahoma. Janet was initiated into the Oklahoma news scene with round-the-clock reporting on the Oklahoma City bombing. In 1996, she joined the team at WFAA-TV in Dallas. That same year, she met her husband, Jack, at a movie premiere. They now have three kids, Jackson, 10, Olivia, 9, and Luke, 7, and live in North Texas. Their oldest son, Jackson, has polyarticular juvenile rheumatoid arthritis—a condition Janet says has made her a more passionate reporter on health story assignments. STRATEGY TO A WORK-LIFE BALANCE: “Organization is my friend. On Sunday, I cook an extra meal or two to keep in the fridge—especially since I don’t get home until about 7 p.m.” EVENTS LEADING TO JACKSON’S DIAGNOSIS: “About two years ago we started noticing really bizarre behaviors in Jackson, like how he would walk up the stairs sideways or curl his hands and carry them closer to his body. At first I thought he was just being a kid, but then we went on a camping trip and he said his neck hurt. We went to a doctor, who recommended we see an orthopedic specialist; the thought was that he might have a bone deformity. The orthopedic doc started looking at his joints and saw that Jackson had joint swelling all over his body. Our next stop was the rheumatoid
ologist, who knew instantly that Jackson has rheumatoid arthritis.” JACKSON’S OUTLOOK ON LIFE: “He is very easygoing. Initially, with the diagnosis, he needed to get an MRI. The hospital couldn’t get us in with an anesthesiologist (doctors typically use an anesthetic during a child’s MRI), but Jackson was fine without it. He laid in the MRI for two hours without complaining. Now, he takes a very small dose of chemotherapy [as a part of his treatment plan] every week and he’s a trooper.” HOW YOU HELP JACKSON'S SIBLINGS UNDERSTAND HIS CONDITION: “Being on the news, I believe that facts are always better than hiding things. We do 'shot night' all together on Fridays and Sundays, and Jackson will rank (from one to 10) how the shot goes—my husband and I are both trained to give the shot of the chemotherapy drugs to him at home. When the other kids might complain that Jackson's being treated special, he’ll reply that they could have their joints not work. There’s a lot of laughter in our house.” HOW YOUR SON’S HEALTH SHAPES YOU: “There’s nothing worse than being out of control—particularly when it comes to your own child’s health. The unknown is so very frightening. I appreciate every day and everything we do together as a family much more than I might otherwise. But you do learn to live with it—it is what it is. Life isn’t different; you just fit in the doctor’s appointments, the shots. The kids don’t really know any different.”
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