I do. Degenerative discs, spinal stenosis, and later stage ankylosing spondylitis.
I've had it for over 20 years and only now have been properly diagnosed.
The only problem is all of the damage that happened in those 20 years is irreparable. It's a terrible, painful, progressive disease.
Most days I can hardly walk, when I do it's with a cane.
I'll soon be in a wheelchair.
The articles online about it are terrible and misleading. They say it just arthritis.
It not only affects our bones (causing tons of mini fractures everywhere but mostly in the hips and spine), joints and ligaments calcify, it enlarges our hearts, causes uveitis, shortens our lifespan by quite a lot and messes with our brain so we have difficulty thinking, remembering, etc. Then there's the exhaustion.
Christ.. I'm so sorry to hear you've went through all of this hell. Someone should have listened to you during those 20 years before it got so bad, but unfortunately it can be hard to receive a proper diagnosis due to time, money, incompetence of wank doctors, and so many other factors.
I've had pain since I was around 16, so I understand how crushing it feels to be suffering for so many years and have no idea what's causing it. Like most things, aging exacerbates these sorts of issues too and leaves one with a narrow window for improvement or restricted options for treatment- spinal problems are far easier to manage for a growing child, not a mature adult.
Is there anything that helps to manage your pain at all? Laying down most of the time is my go to, but I can't do that forever. I'm shocked to learn that AS causes all these offshoot problems like fatigue, cognitive deficits, etc bc I have all of these problems too. I have CFS and have been gaslit for years about these neurological problems, even though my vision is permanently blurred and I have no focus or concentration, both short and long term memory issues (I can't remember entire years worth of life)
I truly hope that you and the others on this thread will be able to find even a modicum of relief. Knowing that the disease is only going to progress further as time marches on is a horrible fate, it almost feels like we're better off not knowing these things.
Our body is wonderful. The real problem is disease.
When it comes to this topic I'm prolly really biased as I have to study biology and human physiology extensively for my degree, so I get to hear about some of the worst possible things that can befall the human body.
I find the whole competitive, dog eat dog, struggle for survival that characterizes our biotic ecosystem absolutely nightmarish. Even on a micro scale, fungi and bacteria will try to overtake and colonise any habitable environment they can find, killing anything in their wake. The fact that this seamless process is completely autonomous as well, without any sentience or self awareness guiding this microbial conquest, is all the more unsettling to me.
Yet, we need microorganisms to sustain any sort of life. Humans and animals can only survive with the aid of bacteria and fungi, but all it takes is one stray cell occupying the wrong niche to completely destroy the host organism. At one of my jobs, I had to grow human stem cells in a dish culture frequently, and it was extremely common to see these fragile things dying en masse due to a random bacterial infection, since these fuckers are EVERYWHERE.
Knowing how fragile we are is a really unsettling revelation. Especially in the modern day where we can be saved from death, only to be permanently crippled in some way as a result of a disease, accident, or other traumatic event that wrecks havoc on our mortal coil. Just like organisms with no consciousness, we are hardwired to live and survive at all costs.
Higher level cognitive functioning is such a poor design, would much rather be blissfully unaware of aging or how fucked up my body is becoming from disease and wear and tear.
