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Introduction

I can remember one night when I was 13 wrestling with my brother on the floor of our living room. It was a brief skirmish -- nothing unusual for two pre-teen brothers -- and all in good fun. When we had burned off all of our energy from dinner, we ended the match in a draw. Justin got up to go to bed, and I stayed behind, wondering what had just happened. Maybe I tore something. Maybe I leaned the wrong way. Maybe I bruised a muscle. Something was wrong, and I wasn't sure what it was. My back started aching, and bothered me that night up through the morning. Picking up my 90 pound brother would never feel the same from that point on. Getting up to go to the bathroom bothered me as well. I shook it off, and went about my 8th grade activities just the same as I had the day before. Little did I know that this so-called ache would stay with me until this very day - never subsiding the least bit, and often getting worse. If I had to put a date as to when I started coming down with symptoms, that would be it: roughly around the time of my 13th birthday. Happy Birthday, Seth. How my life would change from that point on...

Early Stages

Certain vivid images flood my memory when I think about that time of my life. I can remember another time when Justin and I were having a catch outside in the back yard. This, too, was around the time of the first back ache. When my mom came outside to tell us dinner was on the table, one of us shouted "last one in is a rotten egg!" and the race was on. The both of us bolted to the back door, and I won. Sitting down after washing up, I felt an achy tingle in my knees that told me that something was wrong. I thought nothing of it, and went for a helping of mashed potatoes - my favorite. The infamous sprint to the door, down the hall, or into the car would forever be changed.

The more I complained about it, the more my mom didn't want to believe it. My brother Brian (who is 9 years older than me) was nearly crippled around this age from the same form of arthritis that I was coming down with. Unfortunately Brian was not diagnosed when he first came down with symptoms because nobody knew what his problem was. Back in the late 1980's, children hardly had 'arthritis', this so-called old people's disease. Orthopedist after orthopedist, Brian was poked and prodded by doctors who could not make sense of his problem. He even was sent to a psychologist at one point because they thought he was making up this pain that prevented him from walking. Almost 9 years to the day after Brian first met Doctor Lehman, my mom made the call to his office that she had avoided making for close to 6 months. Shortly thereafter Doctor Lehman from the Hospital of Special Surgery examined me, and documented my pain as being caused by my 'spondyloarthropathy', a form of Arthritis primarily focused in my hips, back and knees. I kept an infrequent, informal diary from that day on, and some of those entries I have listed here...