Today has been a weird day.

I woke up feeling ok, maybe a bit hungover.

Spent a lot of time navel gazing about stuff… and my back. Always my damn back at the moment.

It’s absolutely miserable weather today, just grey and leek and drizzling and raining constantly.

After lunch I had an appointment with a nurse practitioner on GP at Hand to read out my blood test results. She said that the test did show that I have the gene variant associated with ankylosing spondylitis (HLA-B27) so I think that pretty much confirmed that I’ve got it.

She was very sweet natured and told me not to worry and actually the funny thing is I feel quite relieved in a way because I just felt so sure that’s what I’ve got so I guess this feels like a vindication.

I had a letter come through today confirming my appointment in August with a rheumatologist. To my delight it was the same doctor who kept popping up on private practice websites when I was googling AS the other day, so I’m really really excited about that because he looks the business.

I called mum with the news and she was happy for me and mum-ish. I then spoke to my sister for a long time and she was great as ever. She’s saying they can get me a standing desk at work if I want and she’s telling me to choose a really good chair to replace my existing one at home.

Went out for a long walk at about 3:30pm today and headed to Roding Valley to see if I could get some decent photos and sort my back out.

The AS pain has been a mixed bag today but I think that might be partly down the Coronavirus jab. When I had my first jab it did make me feel pretty achy and I think it did flare up the ankylosing spondylitis a bit.

Not sure why that would be. Maybe because AS is an autoimmune disorder and any other kind of attack on the immune system (LIKE A BIG JUICY COVID VACCINE JAB) exacerbates things.

It’s not been unbearable but it’s maybe like 3 or 4 out of 10 in terms of noticing it today. Anyway, glad I got a big walk in.

Noticed when I was speaking on the phone earlier and put my arm down it felt incredibly achy. I think my whole body is just really sensitive at the moment after the jab.

Obviously we’ve got Kat’s folks over tonight so I need to switch my social head on.

After just writing this entry I stood up and can tell it’s going to get bad and start flaring so I’ve just taken two ibuprofen to mitigate it.

I think this counts as my second flare up since I started the diet.