Hi Joey,
I am so sorry to read this.
My father has AS. Growing up seeing him in so much pain was always so upsetting.
He waited about a decade to get diagnosed-GPs get little or no training in it. He is now 78 -his spine is totally fused, his neck, he has quite sever kyphosis because of it-zero mobility in his neck. He currently has severe pain in his feet, neck-he had an operation at the end of last year because he had bone spurs growing in his neck which meant he couldn't eat solid foods without risking choking. The op wasn't a great success-but he had to try.
He fell a few years ago and because of his fused spine it took months to find he had broken his back in 3 places and several ribs.
Personally I started to develop chronic uveitis from the age of 19-episodes every three months or so, suffered with the classic buttock/sciatica pain every now and then and fatigue and ibs symptoms plus occasionally psoriasis.
I have recently been experiencing significantly more pain in my hips, eye problems again and dactylitis and been to GP but its like pulling teeth-waiting on the results from the HLA B27 test-although I was positive 35 years ago (I studied genetics at university and worked in Bath rheumatology hosp). Usually age of onset is much younger than me-dad was early 20s when his started and a lad at Uni was diagnosed at 22/23?
Dad has always kept active-he still plays golf, his swing is quite something! He uses special fold out mirrors to help him drive.
Not sure anything I've said particularly helps-it can be a brutal disease.
For other readers it affects approx 1 in 200, a chronic inflammatory disease, with a correlation to the gene HLA B27 but not exclusively. Usually early onset as a young adult, early morning stiffness that improves with exercise (the reverse from mechanical back issues) and usually affects sacroiliac joints in hips and spine and also other parts of the body like the eyes.
Bryn Gunn has it as has, so has Lee Hurst, cricketers Mike Atherton and Michael Slater and the former Tory MP Tom Randall-google him and you can see the classic stiffness and bending his knees so that he can look forward.
Keep fighting Joey.
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