“It wasn’t a gradual process. I went to bed one night and woke up the next morning and I couldn’t walk.”

Aged just 13, Sophie Whoriskey, from Bowling, received a diagnosis which few people her age would have expected.

After suffering “excrutiating” pain in her joints from the jaw down, the now 23-year-old learned she had arthritis, the joint condition which affects over 10 million people throughout the UK.

Ten years on, University of West of Scotland honours student Sophie is creating a short film about her battle with the condition, most commonly associated with older people.

“I remember it really well,” she told the Lennox Herald. “It was September 1, 2008, and I remember my dad coming in to tell me to get up for school.

“I tried to sit up and pull my covers off and I couldn’t move. When I tried to force myself to move the pain hit me.

“My body went hot and I think I went into panic mode.

“It felt like my bones were getting crushed. I managed to sit on the edge of the bed and by this point the pain was from the jaw down.

“I couldn’t move my mouth to speak, to shout for someone. I remember I managed to stand up and that is when it really hit. It was agony.

“The only way I can describe it is it’s as if your ankle came apart from your leg and, as soon as you put pressure on it, it crunches back together.”

After months of tests, Sophie was told she has junior arthritis – a form of the condition which commonly disappears in the late teens.

She was placed on medication at age 14 and believed she would soon recover.

“Things the doctors told me at that age went in one ear and out the other because I was so young and couldn’t really think that far ahead in the future,” she said.

“Maybe I was naive, but I just kept thinking that it would just go away, like any other sickness.”

After being told at the age of 16 that the condition had gone, Sophie’s joints began to hurt again when she was in fifth year of school.

She said: “I got taken off my medication in October 2011, and then by the January of 2012 I remember struggling to hold a pencil and my wrists were getting sore again.

“I flagged it up to the hospital and was told it was my body getting used to being off the medication.

“The thing is, if you break your leg once and then you break it again you know in an instant what has happened because you recognise the pain. That is what it is like for me with arthritis.

“Then in the summer of July 2012 I got a phone call from the hospital to say they had found a significant amount of inflammation in my joints.

“I was taken into hospital for three days and was put on a drip of steroids.”

Doctors again prescribed the same medication and informed her that she would suffer the condition throughout her life.

“When I was 16 I was told this would be part of my life forever. I just thought that my life was over.

“Mentally and physically I didn’t think I could go through that,” she said.

In October 2018, six years later, she finally received a diagnosis of juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

“That means it is spontaneous and, at any point in my life, it could flare up again,” she explained.

Despite initially feeling the condition would hold her back, Sophie has studied musical theatre and performance and is set to train as a primary school teacher later this year.

She is currently working on a short film about the condition to inspire other young people who may be diagnosed.

She said: “I’ve never met anyone my age who has it and I would love to.

“That was the point in making this film. It’s for children and young people who may be getting a diagnosis just now and I want them to know that they will be fine.

“You do not need to think that it will ruin your teenage years.

“One day I was watching TV and saw an advert for the charity Versus Arthritis.

“I just thought it was such a bad representation and I was so annoyed as I just thought if I had a minute and 20 seconds to make a video I would have done so much more.

“If someone had been able to tell me that by my 20s I would be fit and healthy, going to the gym, doing musical theatre, becoming a primary teacher – it would have made a huge difference.

“If you are young and you get a diagnosis like that I would say it is normal to feel lost and broken and a little bit lonely but just work hard and don’t give up.”