2.

Err life in the Police, my dream job got to be difficult. I began to think that the pain would never end, that it would always be there. And yet, in my heart I sort of knew it would be ok. How wrong can you be! I was severely beaten by 4 men in a cinema one night, knocked backwards through a row of cinema seating (the old fashioned kind) i took the back of one seat off with my spine...........mind you my face hurt so much that I did't notice the back (often wondered if this event might have been the trigger but know really that i had pain before it so that sort of sqashed the trauma theory) I worked in a boisterous city centre and was involved in a few fracas, me usually coming off worse, they didnt seem to like me taking their knives off them........well you dont need a knife when all you are eating is soup do you..

I didnt leave the police because of AS (as I often tell people because it is convenient) that is a whole new story perhaps for another day.

Anyway I had to leave the job that I had cossetted since early school days, was in unexplained pain all the time, it was unbearable. I got a job in a circus as a lion tam..............oh no sorry selling orange juice and popcorn...........actually, that was when I was still at school and when I met Mary Bacynski, my first love my first kiss......then her boyfriend came in.............well that is yet another story.......

I spent time at the City Hospital in Nottingham (the one where Jeanna worked for a while) I was in real trouble, incapable of doing anything, getting up at night turning on the gas fire with my back as close to it as possible without searing the skin, in a desperate endeavour to get some relief.....was prescribed Phenylbutazone which I took for years, they did no good other than to cause other problems (to private to mention here but if you are lucky I will tell you in pm but wear a girdle when I do). I was in the care of Sam James their rheumatologist, there is a ward named after him now. I went through 4 years of agony on a moment by moment basis, Sam eventually told me after the fearsome pressing he got from one of my wives that I had a rare disease called Anky.........etc. that it would burn itself out after 20 years and all would be well.


Keep Mobile he said (yes that was right) and so it went on for some years but it didnt burn out, it didnt get better, only worse and worse and worse...I have sobbed with it, (only in front of girls though) I have endured that moment which all ASers hve, that singular moment the horrifying moment when your optimistic mind finally realises...

This isnt going away, this will always be here, all the days of my life to come will be horribly despoiled by this thing. A horrifying day and yet a great day.........great because I knew then that it was time for me to retake my life and live it as I could, to get girlriends, drink a bit (bit is english for gallons!!)So I went to work on construction sites, here the damage was exacerbated, i had a divorce or two, burned my wrist on an iron and boasted ever after that the scae was from the time that I was attacked and heroically brought the knifeman to his knees or alternativelythat I had a desperate cancer and that it was so chilling a thing that I had tried to end it all.......mind you I usually saved that one for the girls, wow they fell for it lots of times......lol

AS now began in earnest, the damage started to appear, the remorselessness of awful pain was almost gaggingly, lung restrictingly felling........but more of the good old days tomorrow........