Pain and your Emotions with Ankylosing Spondylitis

Hello, welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. I hope this show finds everybody doing fantastic. I want to thank those people that went over to spondypodcast.com and signed up for the newsletter, I really appreciate that it's great to see the numbers growing. And, you know, I look forward to communicating with everybody through the newsletter and hearing from you on the Contact link.

So, on today's show, one of the things that you know, I've really thought about lately is not so much that it's affecting me but that I've seen it talked about a lot online is the pain that comes along with ankylosing spondylitis and the damage that it can do to you emotionally. So I wanted to look at pain and your emotions today and I happen to find a really neat article on that titled Pain and your Emotions on ankylosingspondylitis.net if you have not gone out to Ankylosing spondylitis.com That, I encourage you to do that. It's a fantastic website filled with a lot of really, really good articles about Ankylosing Spondylitis and all the ramifications that it does and how it affects your life by not only the editorial team, but also by a number of writers with AS. So I encourage you to head over to ankylosingspondylitis.net.

As we all know, Ankylosing Spondylitis is a chronic type of arthritis. It's also as you've heard, in the last few episodes, we refer to it as Axial Spindyloarthritis, which is kind of a little more inclusive term. It is characterized by pain in your hips, your spine, rib cage, neck, really anywhere, it can affect you. We're all affected differently. Mine started in my hips, my si joints, progressed to the actual hip socket damage, and then worked its way up at spine for me So it's been a unique journey on my end. But I know other people have had completely different experiences. And you know, that's the great thing about the community is you can learn from others to help understand what your body is going through. So anyway, it's caused by excess inflammation in the joints. We know that people with ankylosing spondylitis can experience limitations in their ability to move because of the pain and inflammation. One thing we hear over and over is get up and move, you’ve got to get up a movement. And I agree with that, there are some with ankylosing spondylitis like myself, who after multiple hip replacements moving is not as easy I walk with a cane, and in many spots, I use crutches only because I've been having a pretty serious issues with my hips lately. So we're all different. I encourage you to do as much exercise in any given day as you can, because that movement is really going to help to keep you in the long run, feeling better. And then lastly, over time, your spine can fuse. This is what's called bamboo spine. Its kind of where the name of the disease started. And you can see somebody with it very distinctly because they'll generally be hunched over. You know, it's not hard to pick out chronic pain and Ankylosing Spondylitis.

So, as Ankylosing Spondylitis progresses, you know, it progresses differently in everybody. Where I had a heavy attack in my sacroiliac joints and my hips when I was younger, others have it in their back, knees, ankles, wherever but one of the most common symptoms that accompanies the disease is the overall just chronic pain. Many AS patients are able to successfully manage their pain using over the counter medications and prescription pain medications. You know, the Nsaids, the heavy strength nsaids, the maloxicam, the Celebrex is whatever your body handles the best. I was on Celebrex for geez, I don't know 17-18 years, something like that worked really well for me. But I now have some kidney damage because I also took other stuff on top of it that I wasn't supposed to, to help. And well, I lost some kidney function, so that can be common for folks. Some people, however, experience...