Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. It's going to sound like a broken record, but I just can't thank all of you listeners enough. It's been incredible the numbers that I keep seeing on the show, we've now been downloaded in 58 different countries. To me, that's amazing. When I went about making the show, it was going to be only in English. And I didn't really know what kind of reach the show would have. But 58 countries is amazing, we've literally circled the globe. It's great to see everybody that is enjoying the show, and finding some type of comfort from it, entertainment value, whatever, and then turn around and contacting me and saying how you like the show. So it’s been fantastic and it's been really interesting. The downloads coming out of Switzerland have been huge. So whoever's in Switzerland enjoying the show, I hope you just keep enjoying. I'll just keep making the shows for everybody around the world. But it's neat to see these downloads come from different countries.
With that, I want to go to the Question of the Week. This question was brought about kind of by video I just watched where a young lady recently diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis was very upset just with the overall you know, everything of dealing with being diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. That video kind of broke my heart. As many know I was diagnosed a long time ago and my remembrance of being diagnosed is non-existent. I just have Ankylosing Spondylitis just is what it is. It's been part of my life for 35+ years. So when I see somebody that's recently diagnosed or read about it, it kind of breaks my heart as they go through all the stages of understanding and dealing with what a diagnosis means.
With that said, I wanted to point out a website that many of you may be familiar with. If you're not, this might be of help. There's a website called ankylosingspondylitis.net. What I like about that website is all the resources available. There's a community section about it a basics, Types of Spondyloarthritis, Signs and Symptoms, Being Diagnosed, Treatment, Living with AS, Mental Health, and then some special sections. And there's just a ton of articles out there that are about Ankylosing Spondylitis. I think there are a lot of good things that we can all take away from it. As far as being diagnosed if you're new to this treatment options, again, if you're looking for different ways to help yourself feel better, and I'll have a link in the show notes to ankylosingspondylitis.net. I think it's a great website. I encourage you to go check it out. Look around, you can make a profile and then if you want to tell your story, you can. You can share your story with others, so that it just becomes a more robust community and you get feedback to help you give feedback to help others. It's really I think, just a neat website and a neat resource for all of us to utilize
This week's episode was started by a posting online that I was participating in. We were all kind of having some fun with it. You know, there are all sorts of things that people will tell you to do, generally well meaning and they'll come up to you and say, Well, I know your back is hurting. So try this or you know, go swimming or whatever they tell you. Everybody started a thread based on the pet peeves that they heard, and I pulled out about 23 of them and they kind of make you chuckle. So really, take this episode with some levity, enjoy it and just know that most of the time these people are not meaning anything negative. And just sometimes you’ve got to kind of roll your eyes and say, “Yea, thanks. I never thought of that before.” and move on. Be as snarky as you want or be
