Sarah
Hi, I’m Sarah from Scotland and I am 21 years old. I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis when I was 12 years old and I have inherited it from my mum. I had had the odd pain as a child but nothing major. It was when I had a massive flare up just after I started high school that I was diagnosed. Since then I have been on a number of medications and have had multiple steroid injections. It affected me lot at school, especially when I had a major flare up and was struggling for a full year with the pain. This caused me to withdraw from my friends and eventually when I started to get better and started going out again I began to have terrible anxiety and have been taking medication for that ever since. I was on methotrexate for a few years and this also caused me many problems. As I knew the effects it was going to have on me every week I used to take about 2 hours each time to finally let the nurse inject me. I would get myself so uptight about it that I would be sick before I had even had it. I have now been on enbrel for about 5 years and since I have been taking it I have generally be feeling ok. I have the odd bad day but nothing compared to what I used to be like.
Scotland
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Dear Sarah,
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Stay strong.
Sincerely Cookie