How it Feels with Ankylosing Spondititis

Hi all,

If you are on this page, you are either a good friend of mine, or you were being tortured by some unimaginable pain. You feel the world is unfair. Why others can engage in sports and physical activities, while you were limping around in pain?

The pain comes in bouts. Sometimes you are well, but most of the time you’re not. You’ll probably think that you’ve somehow sprained your back, or your hip, and it’s so bad that it didn’t recover for years. Your boss might think you’re trying to skive from work. Your friends think that you are weak. While all the time you’re fighting some persistent pain deep in your hip joint. Changing positions may help, but sometimes it’s so bad that the agony persist no matter what you do. You’re even afraid to cry, as that would involve moving your hip joints. You lie lifelessly in bed, covered in cold sweat, bearing the pain.

The worst part is.. you’re still so young, and you don’t understand why you’re suffering such pain.

Ankylosing Spondititis is an auto-immune disease. Your immune system attacks your joints, especially those in the lower back and hip, causing pain and inflammation. Over time, your body deposits calcium in the damaged sites, and the bones may grow and fuse together. In some extreme cases, all spinal segments were fused into one, forming a “bamboo spine”. By then, can’t turn your neck or torso, and there is no known cure.

There is no sure way of diagnosis either. The average diagnosis time is 7 years, and it is common for patients to be misdiagnosed for other diseases at first, only to be diagnosed correctly when more severe symptoms developed.  By that time, most patients have already received irreparable damage to their bone structure.

I was lucky……