When people ask how I discovered I had Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), I usually pause—because the truth is, it took a long time. The signs were there, but I didn’t have the language or understanding back then to make sense of them. Looking back, I realise the condition had probably been showing itself from my childhood.
As a boy, around ages five to nine, I used to get terrible migraines. Not just a headache, but full-blown migraines that would only stop once I vomited and passed out from exhaustion. No one knew what it was. It wasn’t something we talked about.Me, as a child, carrying on with life, not realising there was a serious problem with my body…We just tried to carry on.
Early Clues from Childhood
Then, in my teenage years and early twenties, I often had pain after playing sport. I’d run around all afternoon with friends—football, rugby, anything really—and I’d walk home with a dull but growing ache in my lower back or just above the glutes, close to the sciatic nerve. Again, I thought I’d just overdone it, or not warmed up properly. At the time, it felt like nothing unusual. But I can see now that it was likely AS beginning to take root.
The real turning point came when I moved to England from South Africa in 1998. I went from a dry heat of 37°C to a freezing 7°C within hours. I remember running up a flight of stairs in a London tube station and feeling a twinge in my hip. By that night, I was in real pain. It spread quickly—hips, lower back, spine. Especially bad at night. Breathing started to hurt because of the spasms in my rib cage.
Pain With No Answers:
Over the next few weeks, I saw doctor after doctor. They all said the same thing: pulled muscle, rest up, maybe take some paracetamol. I tried that, and I tried Nurofen, aspirin, and whatever else I could get my hands on over the counter. They dulled the pain a little, but none of them touched the root problem. Worse still, they brought side effects—paracetamol made me feel emotionally low and unmotivated. Nurofen interfered with my bladder function. It felt like I was constantly needing the toilet, sometimes every two minutes, which made everyday life unbearable.
Desperate, I saw another GP—this time an older Indian doctor. She actually listened. She suspected the issue wasn’t just muscular and prescribed Panamor, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. It helped ease the inflammation to a degree, and more importantly, it pointed me in the right direction. It was the first time someone had taken my symptoms seriously and considered that the issue could be more than just strained muscles.
Diagnosis At Last: The Test That Changed Everything
Eventually, I returned to South Africa, still struggling for answers. That’s when I saw a local GP who recognised the signs of Ankylosing Spondylitis straight away. She arranged for a blood test, which came back HLA-B27 positive. I finally had a name for what had been plaguing me for years.
She suggested I try a general anti-arthritic NSAID called Indomethacin (sold as Arthrexin in South Africa). It’s inexpensive, widely used, and highly effective. For me, it was a breakthrough. I began taking 25mg capsules, up to three or four a day as needed, and the difference was clear. It didn’t just dull the pain—it brought the inflammation under control. Unlike the other painkillers I had tried, it didn’t interfere with my mood, bladder, or anything else. It was simply effective.
That moment marked a major shift. I had finally found a way to manage the inflammation, and with that, the pain. It didn’t solve everything, but it gave me back a measure of control—and for the first time in years, some hope. If you’re curious about what this condition actually is and why it behaves the way it does, my next post breaks it all down in simple, everyday language. You can read it here: What is Ankylosing Spondylitis?.
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