Joint Journey — Jemma Newman

Lifting his toothbrush toward his mouth, my husband, Dave, grimaced in pain. “Elbow still bothering you?” I asked, although I already knew that his elbow and shoulders had been causing him increasing discomfort for months. You’d think a…

I’ve heard of plenty of different triggers that people believe have caused the onset of their ankylosing spondylitis (AS) symptoms, but I’d never considered mold as a possible culprit until a recent online conversation. One of my…

I have strange, recurring nightmares about being stuck in a retirement home (or sometimes a prison — I have no idea why!) and being unable to handle the back pain from my ankylosing spondylitis (AS). In the…

Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with liquid magnesium. Not everyone will have the same response to treatments and supplements. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy or supplement. What a lovely feeling to wake…

The 2000 film “Charlie’s Angels” has a scene in which actress Cameron Diaz enthusiastically jumps out of bed and proceeds to start dancing, wiggling her bottom, and leaping around the room with an enormous grin. Diaz’s energetic…

“Your insides are garbage,” a doctor irritably declares in the first episode of the Netflix series “Wellmania.” The doctor is speaking to the main protagonist, Liv Healy, a fast-living, overly stressed, 39-year-old food critic. Liv has just…

I recently had a breakthrough moment during a job interview, when I proudly announced that, “I have an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis. In fact, I write a weekly column about it!” I was perched on a…

“So what does it feel like, your back problem?” my friend asked, as she tucked her hair behind her ears and picked up a steaming mug of coffee from the table between us. By “back problem” I knew she…

Yesterday I did something that I instantly regretted. I was shopping online for a birthday present for a family member who lives in New Zealand, scanning through websites and comparing sizes and prices, looking for the perfect gift. Finally,…

My husband, Dave, has been talking about his ankylosing spondylitis (AS) symptoms for almost 20 years, though for more than a decade, neither of us realized that AS was the cause of them. Although we didn’t know…

Driving through early-morning city traffic on the way to a Western Australia hospital for my rheumatology appointment, I had what felt like a hundred questions running through my head. Because of COVID-19, I hadn’t been able to see…