Hey Beverly,

You can always do what I do after I have xrays, mri's or myelograms. I wait a few days and then call the records department where ever I had them done and ask if I can pick up a copy. Some place charge patients one or two dollars to make the copies if for personal use, but they give them to you free if you have a doctors appointment coming up and you want to take a set with you.

Anyway, radiologist read the slides and make a report based on guidelines for the area of your body being x-rayed. They use fancy medical words so normal people can not tell what they are talking about. When you took your sheet for the x-rays and mri it probably had "spine" (what ever parts your doctor checked). When you got there you were probably given a paper to fill out with a place where you list your symptoms. Your answers were probably back pain, leg and hip pain, stiffness, muscle spasms, etc...

If you were to read my mri reports and looked up the definitions of the words you did not know, you would possibly come to the conclusion that my vertebrae are full of tumors which would indicate bone cancer. Degenerative disc disease in multiple levels of the spine creating nerve root compression and spinal cord compression.

I have all my medical records since 1984 because my neurosurgeon in Ca told me it would be wise if I kept them for when I changed doctors I could give them copies. I found this very helpful after moving from Ca to NC. Since being back in NC I have had one doctor quit practing medicine and moved to Washington State to teach, my favorite doctor (from the old school) retired in the mid nineties. I found another doctor after he retired with a lot of knowledge on AS and related diseases, who moved his practice to the coast of NC over 4 hours from where I live. The doctor I have now I started seeing at a medical group, she recently moved into her own practice and I went with her.

Doctors order test, x-rays, etc and the technicians can olny tell them what they see. It still takes a doctor to make a diagnosis. As for the radiologist's buddy having AS, what stage is his buddy in, will his buddy's spine fuse totally. AS or SpA affects everyone different and the progression speed is different in every patient. Only your doctor can determine what you actually have.

have a good one,
Brent