HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — In 1995, Nancy Carter woke up one morning physically unable to get out of bed.

“Everything just kind of froze up,” said Carter, owner of Nancy’s School of Dance in Huntington. “I had no idea what was wrong.”

At 48, Carter was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of the joints.

The body’s immune system, designed to protect the body from viruses, bacteria and other foreign invaders, attacks healthy tissue, causing severe pain, swelling of the joints, and loss of motor skills.

“It was pretty devastating,” Carter, now 64, said. “I just thought it was over.”

Carter has been a dancer all her life. Her father was a Vaudeville performer in the 1920s and 1930s, and traveled the country as a tap dancer and comedian.

“He started to teach me to dance probably before I was even born,” Carter said.

She began teaching dance in the mid-1960s in the baseme nt of her home, and eventually expanded to her studio at 731 5th St. West in Huntington, where she teaches 16 classes a week to students age two to 80 years old.

During the first stages of her diagnosis, Carter was unsure if she would still be able to teach. At one point, she seriously considered closing her studio.

“It affected everything I did, not just the teaching and the dancing, but my whole life, from the time I opened my eyes to the time I shut them,” Carter said.

“For 14 years, I tried all different types of care and types of treatment,” she said.

Rheumatoid arthritis affects about 1.3 million Americans, of which 70 percent are women. The disease usually manifests itself between the ages of 30 and 50 years old. The cause of the disease is unknown, and there is no cure. Treatment options aim to reduce pain, inflammation and joint damage.

Carter was able to manage her rheumatoid arthritis until 2009, when her left leg became so inflamed t hat she could not walk.

For a year, she was forced to teach her classes sitting down, and at home she moved from one room to another with the help of a walker.

“The pain was unbearable,” Carter said. Despite this, she continued to come into the studio nearly every day to teach her classes.

She would park herself in a chair at the front of the class, and with the help of her teaching assistants, go through the steps with her students.

“I couldn’t do what I had been doing, and I couldn’t continue as I was,” she said. “For months, I tried different options, then my health care provider suggested Remicade.”

Remicade is a drug treatment injected into a patient for severe rheumatoid arthritis.

Carter said she could feel the difference after just one treatment.

She now visits HIMG Regional Medical Center in Huntington about every six to eight weeks, and is hooked up to an IV for about two hours for treatment.

Able to put weight on her leg again, Carter was determined to get her life back.

She and three of her teaching assistants entered into the adult/teacher category of the national 2010 Showstopper Competition in Columbus.

“When she said she wanted to compete in Columbus, I honestly thought she was delusional,” said Pam Carden, a teaching assistant at Nancy’s School of Dance.

She had just started to get back on her feet after a year of debilitating pain, Carden said

A few weeks before the April competition, Carter’s dance partners dropped out.

Undeterred and unbeknownst to her students and friends, Carter decided to compete solo, and she stole the show.

Carter won the Top Teacher of the Year award for her dance segment set to “Baby You’ve Got What it Takes.”

“I said to myself, if I can get walking again, I am going to tap again,” Carter said. “When you’ve had a hard time, it’s harder still to get back up, and it’s really hard for a tap dance teacher that had to sit down.”

She went from not being able to walk for a year, to winning the whole thing, Carden said.

“A person would not believe the difference,” Carden said.

Carden said her colleague never let on just how debilitating her rheumatoid arthritis was for her.

“None of us really understood the pain she was in. She never let on and just kept going,” Carden said. “Her going to Columbus and competing just shows the star quality in her.”