Wednesday Walker Spotlight – Ricky White of Team ENDURANCE for A.S.

Wednesday Walker Spotlight – Ricky  by Chris Scott & Ricky White
 
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Hello Walkers!!  This week’s Spotlight Walker is Team Endurance for AS, Ricky White. Ricky comes to us from the UK. Here is Ricky’s story…
My AS journey started in the beginning of 2007. This was when I started to get my first symptoms. They typically manifested as ‘sciatica’ and lower back pain, which I was treated with the routine prescription of physiotherapy and NSAIDS. Initially the spells of pain were short lived and sporadic in frequency. Of course now I know that these were of course ‘flare-ups’ of my AS, but at the time it seemed more of an occasional annoyance than something serious.
As time passed these predictably increased in frequency and severity, until one day in 2010 I found myself in such a state, I was unable to work at all for a 3 month stretch. To me this felt like a lifetime. It was at this point I was finally diagnosed with AS. Thankfully there was only 3.5 year wait from onset to diagnosis. That might seem an odd thing to say, but I’d take a 3.5 year delay over a 7 – 10 year delay any day (which is the current average time delay for diagnosis in the UK).
During my AS journey so far I’ve had my ups and downs like most. I am grateful that I am in a much better place both physically, and emotionally than I once was. This is down to many people, notably my wife, my rheumatologist, and of course the continual support of the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society (NASS).
I also owe a lot to you. Yes you there reading this. The online AS community has helped me greatly, and for that I am indebted. This is why I decided to join the Walk Your AS Off campaign, to pay back my debt, and to give others the same encouragement and support I have been blessed with over the last 3 years. So my steps over course of Walk Your AS Off are not for me, or for any personal goal, but they are dedicated to you, and the future ‘newbies’ who start on their AS journey every since day.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, we all need to help each other to help each other, we owe it to ourselves. So my involvement in Walk Your AS Off is my way of helping others to help others.
I’d like to thank you all so far for your hard work and phenomenal step counts to date. Together we will get the world to notice, and maybe we can even get the world to spell Ankylosing Spondylitis!
You can follow my progress in the Walk Your AS Off campaign via my AS blog Endless Trax, or via the Endless Trax Facebook page.

See you at the Moon!!

(Oh and put the kettle on while you wait for me)

 

We would love to have YOU in our Wednesday Walker Spotlight. All you need to do is contact me at Facebook.com/WalkYourASOff or Facebook.com/MoCoChris

Keep counting those steps!!

 

 
 
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If you would like to be a Wednesday walker Spotlight or have a team member with an interesting story to tell, Contact Chris Scott at facebook.com/WalkYourASOff or facebook.com/MoCoChris
Chris Scott was diagnosed with Psoriatic Spondylitis in 1999 and he’s been waging a war on AS since. When Chris received the diagnosis, he went to work to find out everything he could about this AS & he works along side his Rheumatologist, hounding him about new drugs and therapies. AS finally forced Chris to leave his job as a Firefighter/Paramedic in 2009. Since that time, he’s come across many, many wonderful people and has had the pleasure of meeting several ASer’s at various AS Events around the Mid West and Canada. Chris writes our Wednesday Walker spotlight.

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