Anka-what?
About 10 years ago, when I was an apprentice Ironworker, I was working on the Froedhert Cancer center expansion and I developed something called Iritis. After going to the doctor with partial blindness in my eye, painful pressure, and abnormal discomfort to light, I was diagnosed with an irritation of the iris in my eye. It's not uncommon to get this once or twice, especially if you did something to irritate it. But then I started getting it about 3 times a year. Every damn year. Sometimes it would be so bad that I'd have to keep my eye dilated for up to a month, would lose most of my vision in whatever eye it was at the time, and use a steroid eye drop up to 6 times a day for up to 2 months!
Chronic Iritis is not common at all. it's very rare to get it all on it's own. It is common though with any auto-immune disease. So I went to my regular doctor to have it checked out. I went through all sorts of tests including the standard blood tests. That's when they caught my NAFLD. That's Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. It turns out, eating staight out of the trough of ice cream and devouring a bag of popcorn every night by myself wasn't healthy. All that fat had to go somewhere, and it did. as it turns out, your liver is a fat magnet. it sucks it up and doesn't let it go. But after a small diet change, that has been under control for some time now. But that doesn't explain the Iritis.
But back to the topic at hand, for many years I have had a really sore back. My sciatic nerve would end up bothering my for a week at a time almost every month. It was really getting bad. Back to the doctor I would go and was diagnosed with a generic "lower back arthritis" condition called degenerative joint disease. Ok, I've got something for an answer, but what can I do about it? How can I treat the pain? I was taking far too many ibuprofen for it to do any good for my stomach lining, but it was partially helping the pain.
I would wake up every morning for a few years with back pain. I never slept in, I couldn't. The pain was too much. After a few ibuprofen, my back would loosen up and I would be fine. After longer drives, my back would hurt. After sitting and watching TV for a few hours, my back would hurt. This isn't normal and I was not accepting this current diagnosis.
After my doctor left the practice, I got a new one. She listened very well and decided to refer me to a rhumatologist. After talking with him and explaining my symptoms, it was pretty evident what I had to him. I took another blood test and then another. He wanted to cover all the bases and leave nothing out. Although my blood doesn't have the typical HLA-B27 protein marker, it is possible to have my condition without it. It's called a symptomatic diagnosis. I had a name for it that I suspected all along.
Ankylosing-Spondylitis. It is a potentially debilitating disease that could, at worse, leave me with a condition commonly known as Bamboo Spine where the lower spine fuses itself together. There is no cure. It affects younger people usually between the ages of 18 and 45. It's somewhat similar to Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, or even psoriasis. My system that is used to fight off viruses is attacking my back thinking it is a virus itself. My sacroiliac joint is always inflamed and that is what is causing the pain.
The treatments? Now that's was what I was waiting for. Exercise. That's a big one. A body in motion stays in motion. That makes sense. Also, for those dormant periods, I've been taking a different anti inflammatory called Diclofenac. Also, as of tomorrow (7/02/18) I will be on Humira. It's a shot that I have to take every 2 weeks. It's early, so I'm not sure how I'll feel or the effects this will have on my, but I guess that'll have to be another story sometime. I do know that it reduces my chance to fight other infections, so that part is pretty scary. It'll help my condition, but it could make me sicker or make it harder to fight off the common cold or the flu. It could make it last longer than normal. I guess I'll just have to see how it goes.
All I know is that I'm going to continue life as I know it. Keep moving. Keep hiking. Keep photographing. Keep laughing and loving. It could be worse. So I'm looking at this as just another adventure that we're going through. Stay positive, I got this!
Here's some reference sites if you would like to learn more:
https://www.spondylitis.org/Ankylosing-Spondylitis
https://www.arthritis-health.com/types/general/sacroiliac-joint-pain-and-inflammation
https://www.humira.com/ankylosing-spondylitis
