I’ve only been recently diagnosed with AS, but I’ve been looking for a diagnosis for ove

I’ve only been recently diagnosed with AS, but I’ve been looking for a diagnosis for over a decade.  It all started in my early 20s with generalized pain and excruciating sharp pains coupled with swelling in my joints.  At the time my blood work and clinical findings indicated lupus but there wasn’t really enough there to diagnose me.  The rheumatologist also thought I might be heading toward a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, but there wasn’t any visible damage to my joints on the images yet, and my RF was negative.  So, back in the early 2000s I was in diagnosis limbo and placed on a series of mediations that were under a lot of scrutiny at the time: Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex.  I was very sick on these medicines and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of pills from everything that was being prescribed.  In the end, sometime in 2005, I just decided to “cut my losses” and drop out of treatment with mainstream medicine.  I did see a naturopath and eventually an Integrative Medicine doctor, but my experiences were not as positive as the many people who have had success with those methodologies.  Unfortunately, after about 6 years of just “hanging on” I had a severe downturn in my health.  It all happened during the happiest time in my life too, which is sad. In 2011 I gave birth to our charismatic little son. The pregnancy was miserable, with every complication I could imagine, followed by an emergency induction at 35 weeks after being on hospital bedrest.  It seemed that my body never recovered, and over the next two years as I got worse my doctors seemed all too willing to let me blame any ache or pain on post-pregnancy healing… or to suggest I had post-partum depression.  During that two year period we also moved, and the move was excruciating.  I ended up needing my mom to come from out of state to help because my whole body locked up on me.  It was at that point, where I went beyond pain and into immobility, that I promised my husband I would find a rheumatologist and get to the bottom of things.  The worst part of all this has been the way it impacts my husband and son.  The constant feeling that I don’t measure up as a wife or mother stinks, but the days where my husband has to do double the work, or my son wants to play outside but mommy can’t handle going for a walk are worse.  When he sees the other kids get picked up for a better view at the zoo – well, sometimes mommy can do it (I guess he’s sorta-lucky that mommy is in the beginning of the AS journey because some AS moms couldn’t EVER do it)………I have AS.  I am one of the faces of AS. ~Angel -- source link

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