Tuesday

She has overcome odds, risen to the challenge, and walked when walking wasn't possible.

Erin suffers from juvenile diabetes and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

"She's an inspiration to me and I think to a lot of other people," Proulx said. "There were times when she would be in class and she could barely keep awake (because of her medication)."

He would tell her she could go to the nurse's office whenever she needed to, but she would usually tough it out, he said.

Erin never complained, Proulx said, and she kept up such a cheerful face that many of the faculty didn't even know about her medical problems.

Erin was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when she was only a toddler. At age 9, she began giving herself her own insulin shots and learned to manage her diabetes herself.

Around Christmas of 2002, Erin began experiencing severe joint pain — unable to take stairs one at a time. Even combing her hair caused her excruciating pain, said her mother, Teri. Doctors confirmed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, another autoimmune disease.

Some days she could barely walk, but she limped her way to class at Newmarket High School, and fought off sleep from the heavy doses of medicine she had to take, just to function.

Erin said many of her classmates were unaware of her struggles. She didn't want people to feel sorry for her or to look at her "differently because of (her) illness."

Then, too, the ones who knew didn't always understand.

"Kids ... joke about it with me all the time," she said. "I laugh along and act like it doesn't hurt, but the truth is it really does ... I wonder when kids joke with me about it, do they know that some mornings I can't walk because I am in so much pain? Do they realize that sometimes it takes all I can just to make it through a school day or that even writing hurts sometimes? Do they know how extra hard I have to work in school to keep up my grades because I miss so much school on account of pain?"

"My answer is no. No one can fully know what it's like except people that experience it and my family, who sees what I go through every day. I want people to know how I feel. I just wish they could walk in my shoes for one day and see, but at the same time I don't want people to judge me differently, so it's a constant battle within to deal with the emotional stress of it all," Erin said.

Although the juvenile rheumatoid arthritis has affected her social life, her job and her schoolwork, Erin keeps on going.

She will attend Unity College in Maine in the fall. "I am not going to let this disease get me down," she said. "I am going to live as normal a life as possible."

It is Erin's dream to someday run a hostel in an underdeveloped country. She loves adventure.

Though her academic grades may not appear — at face value — to be the highest of grades, in fact, every B or C that Erin earned over the years was at the cost of pain and determination.

And she accomplished it all with a joy as well.

Proulx said Erin was popular and that her upbeat perspective was contagious.

"Everyone I know adores her," he said.

When the going gets tough, the tough, who are in the know, look to Erin, Proulx said.

"She's a good role model to a lot of us who think we have it tough."