Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group What do you call it?

AS that is.

I suppose the most obvious thing is to call it a pain, but then it's many pains, so a singular 'pian' doesn't suffice. Not just a pain in neck or even just a pain in the AS s, though clearly it's both if those.

Is it best described as a nightmare? The trouble with that description is that we can't wake up from it.

The best desription I ever heard was from a Scotish doctor - with that great Scotish gift for using trivial-sounding terminology but with great gravitas - he said on hearing of my diagnosis, "Och. That's a shame".

So is it a pain, a nightmare, or a shame, or what do you call it?

Cheers,

Hi Loz,

I call it a personal tormentor. Mind you, the AS monster seems fitting too.

Hmm, AS... A Spider? 'Beast' comes to mind.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to tame the beast into submission..! (For brief periods of joyous denial.)

Hope you are winning lately!
mig

It is not to be overly obscure a real doppelganger. The nasty one that I do not see but clearly resides with me.

I figure if I tell that to folks askin' it sounds serious enough to dissuade furhter inquiry and like Samuel Jackso said to some effect in Pulp Ficiton ,)poorly paraphrasing) its just sounds some heavy sh#* that I just like saying.

A doppelganger! That's it! I just knew you would come up with a gem for this thread, Steve.

Now if I can only remember it, I am going to 'borrow' that one!

"a cross to bear" is probably my favorite way to think of it . . . think of the posture of someone carrying that heavy cross . . . it's going to hurt his back, and his neck, and his shoulders, and his legs are straining from the weight, he's bent far forward because the bottom of the cross is longer than his legs. I've seen this many many times, we have a lot of Penitentes here who re-enact the whole thing every Holy Week . . . men tie the cross onto their wrists and walk miles along the highways to get to the santuarios. And they whip themselves. (not that that has anything to do with AS . . .) And one man gets the "honor" of actually being nailed to it.

Another reason I like the phrase is that saying "Everyone has their cross to bear," is true, because people who are perfectly healthy may have horrible families, or chronic relationship problems, or drug problems, or their children are sick . . . it reminds me that even though AS is a heavy, painful cross, I'm blessed in everything else in my life, and everyone carries SOMETHING just as heavy as AS.

BTW I'm not Christian. lol

Och,aye- indeed a shame...

I think of it as "The Monster That Lurks Within" as it strikes sometimes when least expected and has unpredictable behaviour in the way and where of its strikes...

my sister calls her MS the beast or the monster.

ive refered to it as the 'invisible monster', 'sick joke', and 'thief' [theif?]

when i think of my AS "barbwire back" comes to mind. move 1 way its not to bad but move the wrong way feels like a barb spike in the spine & some times feels just like im tangled in a roll of it and cant get out.

When AS slows me down or stops me cold, I call it "The Big Time Waster".