I’ve got Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), a chronic disease that causes inflammation of the joints. Sometimes it hurts like hell, yes, but here a few other things to my disease apart from pain:

• I don’t personally know anyone else who has AS
• I get a whole lot of symptoms but no one I read about on forums seems to have the same combination of symptoms as me
• I need to maintain a positive attitude and accept AS as a part of my life
• I worry that people think I am faking my disease so that I can get out of stuff
• And lots, lots more…

So what’s my point here? This blog isn’t a place for disease sufferers to air their thoughts. My point is that these are my insights about my disease. They are patient insights – small nuggets of reality for a patient that are not necessarily common knowledge to non-patients. Read on…

We all remember the global furore early this year that followed the publication of the anti-islamic cartoons of Mohammed. The cartoons were orginally published in Denmark which led politicians there to trumpet the importance of freedom of speech as a fundamental building block of western society. Read on…