At first glance, 23-year-old Ginamarie Russo wouldn't seem to have much in common with the professional fighters she writes about for a boxing website. The Hofstra University senior is an aspiring actress and has modeled designer clothes on NBC’s “Today show.”

But she's got a natural icebreaker: She shares the same hand surgeon as many of her sources.

"The fact that many of them have used or plan to use the same hand doctor can definitely open up the communication lines," she says. "We realize the importance of our hands and have experienced or anticipate experiencing limited mobility or pain."

At age 12, the native of Long Island, N.Y., developed chronic pain in her right wrist, which was initially passed off by doctors as tennis-related tendinitis. But pain and swelling persisted; hot and cold therapy and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, were little help. A blood test eventually helped diagnose her juvenile arthritis. The condition now affects her knees, ankles, shoulders and wrists, but it's been particularly destructive to her right hand – the one she uses to write notes and articles.

"My hand would cramp up so bad when I wrote," she says. "I would write something and then not be able to move my hand. I used my Blackberry a lot. I'd jot down a one-word note and have to figure out what it meant later."

A Surgical Solution

That's why she sought out orthopaedic hand surgeon, Charles Melone, MD, director of the Division of Hand Surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He frequently repairs the damage that professional boxers, basketball players and baseball stars inflict on their hands, and he's especially well known among fighters because he helped boxing equipment manufacturer Everlast design some of its training gloves.

In November, Dr. Melone replaced four of the knuckles in Ginamarie's right hand with silicone implants and realigned her tendons. After the surgery, Ginamarie worked with a certified hand therapist for five months and now exercises her hand on her own.

The surgery isn't the only recent change she's made in her arthritis management. Ginamarie used to take methotrexate and adalimumab, or Humira, but she went off that regimen with the approval of her rheumatologist, Anne Eberhard, MD, chief of Pediatric Rheumatology at the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center in Manhasset, N.Y.

"Occasionally we can give a patient a drug-free holiday if their arthritis is in remission," but only under a doctor's supervision, Dr. Eberhard says. "When symptoms come back, we have to start medications again."

Rebuilding Strength

Ginamarie knows she may eventually have to take drugs again, but for now she's feeling OK with a gluten-free, dairy-free diet and exercise: She walks and does Zumba, a Latin-inspired dance fitness class.

And she works out her hand on a device called an outrigger. The outrigger, which she says makes her look a little like the Terminator, uses cables attached to her fingers to help realign them and build strength through resistance training.

Her right hand is sometimes stiff, and she can't form a tight fist, which means she occasionally has trouble holding onto small items like pennies. But she doesn't experience the fatigue or debilitating pain she did before and has more mobility –which makes it much easier to write.

"I was in excruciating pain before," she says. "Now I can work for hours with no pain."

Throughout her surgery and rehab she's had support from her family, including her identical twin sister Annamarie Russo – and from all her boxing friends. The fighters who'd never had hand surgery were in awe; one even jokingly wanted to know if she was going to replace her knuckles with brass knuckles.

And the boxers who had seen Dr. Melone for surgery: "We have an unspoken appreciation for one another's hand issue," she says. "I keep in touch with several of them. They have become my friends."