After getting some valuable advice from many of you here in this usenet
group I scheduled an emergency appointment with my Rheumatologist.
After returning to part time work this week (22 hours) after 10 months
or so of inactivity and being approved of SSD in April, my body has
been decimated so to speak.  I worked hard on Monday due to training
and Tuesday thru Thursday it was more half days.  But, today I woke up
and due to my AS I am stiff as a board and feel like someone beat the
heck out of me overnight.  The best way to describe it is like I ran a
marathon or something.  I scheduled the emergency visit because of all
the pain and stiffness.  My stomach is bothering me immensely to the
point its like Irritable bowl which I think is the Naprosyn I am
taking.  And of course its the usual suspects, my neck which is fused,
my low back, hips and frozen shoulders.  Here is what my Dr. told me.
First of all he scheduled a CT scan for my stomach, an MRI for my
cervical area and finally when I asked about Remicade he agreed and
said lets give it a 90 day trial run.  So there you go.  He said stay
off the naprosyn for a while due to stomach problems and said take
small doses of coated aspirin.  He also told me to lose weight.  I
weigh in about 240 and a shade under 6 ft. tall.  The problem is all my
weight is in my stomach and back end.  I take a 40 size pants but
around the waist its getting to tight.  He is a great Dr. that gives me
great advice.  No metho until we see the results of remicade he said.
Hopefully, this will help.  He did say once again my problem is mostly
bone rubbing bone pain.  He said my condition is moderate.  He said
since I'm working part time and able to get to and from my condition
isn't like some severe cases he gets.  But my problem he said is too
much fusion going on at 48 years of age.  I forgot to tell him about my
severe rib pain where at times its hard to breath.  Is this part of the
AS too?  Half the time I don't understand all of this even though I do
read up on it a lot.  I still haven't come to grips with all the pain
and stiffness yet even though I have been battling this AS for over 20
years.  The severe pain though has only been the past 5 years or so.
Thanks to all of you for the advice once again.  Sorry for the long
update but if this helps someone else then I suppose its good.  The
moral of the story is don't put off pain and uncomfortable living.
React immediately.  That's why usenet is VALUABLE.