Siobhβn Alley (29) is looking forward to a hip transplant. Noel Buckley (41) has learned to overcome the agonising pain he woke up with one morning six years ago. Both teachers have a condition that we tend to associate with old age, especially with elderly women, and therefore don't take as seriously as we should.
It is a destructive attitude, of course, as arthritis affects one in seven Irish people and one in three Irish families. And 5,000 children here live with arthritis.
Its nagging, sometimes excruciating pain will get most of us at some stage: most over 55s show X-ray evidence of osteoarthritis in at least one joint.
There are 100 types of arthritis. Osteoarthritis, which results from injury to joints, is the most common, affecting three times as many women as it does men.
Alley suffered damage to her hip joint when she was 12 years old. She lives in constant discomfort - "a constant nag like a toothache" - and over the years her movement has become more and more restricted.
Her tolerance to the pain shifts, but the more she walks and moves, the more pain she feels. At times, the pain wakes her in the middle of the night. This happens when the muscles around the joint go into spasm.
"To manage that, I try to stay relaxed and in good humour, and not do too much. I know exactly how far I can go."
Buckley had an uncle who died at a young age from rheumatoid arthritis, the form of the disease that he has also suffered. He describes the pain, which affects his knees, as like walking on red-hot coals.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory condition, also affecting women three times more often than it does men, in which the body's immune system attacks cartilage, bone and, sometimes, internal organs, usually causing joint disease. Although the disease can go into remission, any joint damage during the inflammatory phase will be permanent, often causing disability.
Like Alley, Buckley believes in positive thinking. Alternative medicine and diet have put his arthritis in remission. At one point, he decided he couldn't let the illness take control of him. At first, he took nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but when these started damaging his stomach, he put himself in the care of Don Gowing, a holistic alternative practitioner.
On Gowing's recommendation, Buckley stopped eating all processed foods, cut down on dairy products, oranges and tomatoes and started taking high doses of fish oils.
An influential member of the ASTI, Buckley has found that the disease returns if he lets himself get overtired, as happened last year, in the stressful circumstances of the secondary teachers' strike. Listening to his body and resting restore him to health.