The Faces Of Ankylosing Spondylitis

My story is much the same as those that came before me and those that will come after.  Hopefully someday science will put a stop to all the pain.  Our stories, your story, my story, his story, her story, are almost all the same. Weeks, months, years, decades of pain, stiffness and fatigue with too few answers and little help. Strangely when you finally put a name to it all… a sense of relief.  Relief that it’s real, redemption that it wasn’t all in your head. But you’ve just been diagnosed with an incurable disease?  You already knew, you just didn’t know what to call it. I’ve been lucky, with friends and family who love and support me, a doctor who does everything he knows how to help me find relief, any relief.  A doctor I am also blessed to call friend. I can’t give up, I won’t give up, I keep moving, keep going, keep pushing, keep loving, keep fighting.  I’ve already lost so much of who I was, at a time when you’re still trying to figure out who you are!  I have faith that I am doing what I am  supposed to and that life is unfolding the way it was meant to, whether I can see it now, or not. I’m ever so grateful  for a wonderful international community of spondys supporting one another, holding out hope, standing tall together and holding out a hand in the dark.  Life is so very short and precious, and this is the only one I have got, we’ve got. Some days I will lose the battle, but ultimately I hope to win this war.  I’m determined to not allow AS to take me from those whom I love.

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. -John Wayne

Nova Scotia, Canada

• HOME
• NEXT
• PREVIOUS