Columns

In November 2022, after a tearful Minion-themed goodbye party, I did what I thought was the best model for my seventh graders: I told them I needed to put my health first. I resigned from my position as a full-time special education teacher in a middle school and switched to…

It’s summer, which means I want to spend more time outside, preferably near water with an ice cream in hand. Living with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has required me to have a different form of “hot girl summer,” though, as I manage the ups and downs of…

Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with an il-17 inhibitor. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. When my rheumatologist first told me we were going to try a biologic medication to treat my…

Ever since I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) three years ago, I’ve had many nights when I convinced myself I was better off staying at home in front of the TV with a heating pad on my back, watching “Love Is Blind.” When you are…

For the first year after my diagnosis, I dreamed almost nightly of my healthier self. In the depths of rapid eye movement sleep, I was sprinting across the soccer field, jogging down the paved roads of Central Park in New York, even shuffling my seventh-grade students through the subway…

I’ve written about how receiving an ankylosing spondylitis (AS) diagnosis shook me to the core and became part of my identity for a long time. I felt doomed. The literature told me that pain and disease progression would increase with time. This expectation became a self-fulfilling prophecy in…

The pain started in my teen years, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it would become a close companion for many years to come. Yet despite this persistent chronic pain, it took well over a decade to receive a formal diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Living with…

When I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) in December 2019, I frequently felt anxious, miserable, and utterly exhausted about my future. But if I could go back and tap myself (gently) on the shoulder at that difficult time, I’d have some encouraging thoughts to share. If anyone reading…

“I can barely remember these events happening. I was just so tired all the time,” my husband, Dave, sadly remarked as we scrolled through family photos from a few years ago. The fatigue caused by ankylosing spondylitis (AS) isn’t the same as feeling that you could use a…

When I was in my mid-to-late teens, I started noticing that pain was a regular part of my life. I have memories of a shoebox full of prescription medication beside my bed — some to treat the various pains I was experiencing and others to manage the side effects.