Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. I hope everybody has been just having a fantastic week. It's always exciting when I get to bring a new episode out. And this one really I think is going to be real helpful for some folks. But first, before we get to this week's episode, let's take care of a couple of housekeeping things. I need you to help everybody that listens, I really want to see the both Instagram page if you go to Instagram.com/as_podcast, I have a link in the show notes. I hope you go there like the page if you're on Instagram, as well as go to spondypodcast.com and sign up for the newsletter. I really love seeing those numbers grow and I want to see him keep ratcheting up, keep growing so that I can stay in touch with everybody. 

So onto this week's show, I see a lot of questions across the different Facebook forums, from people that are fairly new to being diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Maybe in the last few years, maybe they've moved have not been real diligent about going to a rheumatologist thought, oh, I'll treat it naturally. And just haven't built that rapport up that some people have after dealing with the rheumatologist for over, you know, 10 plus years. So I came across this article, and I thought it would really be helpful. And it's titled Ankylosing Spondylitis doctor discussion guide, what you're forgetting to ask your doctor. And I really thought it covered a lot of good basis, I know what it's like you get in there, you maybe get a little nervous dealing with the doctor dealing with the staff, it's old hat for them, they they deal with the stuff every day, we see them maybe two or three times a year. So it goes back to making sure that you are your best advocate. That's a theme I try to put through this whole podcast show is that the best advocate for treating your disease is going to be you making sure that you give all the proper information to the doctor. And with that said, I wanted to go through the eight things that this article discussed. Now, they make a really good opening. And they say a diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis may leave you feeling overwhelmed and concerned about the future, AS is a chronic or long term form of arthritis that causes inflammation, stiffness, and pain in the joints of your spine. And really the joints of your body, your doctor will go over AS treatment options with you. But they may not address everything you need to know to help you manage your condition. And then they go on to these eight different things. And I really thought they were good included in this. When you go down to the show notes, there is a form that they have in the article that you can print and take to the doctor's appointment with you. And I'll have a link to that. So you can go ahead and and pull it up as a PDF form printed off and take it to the doctor if you'd like.

Number One, What can I do to manage my AS at home? Well, there's so many ways that you can look at your house to make it work better for you. And it's important that you know what your limitations are so that you can best address those, you know, maybe at some thing like vacuuming, maybe instead of the vacuum you have, you need to look at a lighter vacuum, maybe even a robotic vacuum, or vacuuming just sections of the home at a time instead of doing the whole house, maybe do a couple bedrooms or a living room, take a break, you know, whatever needs to be done. But there are different things you can look at. If it's vacuuming causes issues, you know, maybe it's ironing, maybe you need to sit down while you iron. I haven't ironed anything. Gosh knows how long. So that one's kind of out the window. I don't even know if I own an iron. I don't think I do grocery shop online or enlist the help of grocery store clerks to bag and load your groceries. This is a pretty easy one. As we move forward, it's been getting easier and...