Seb, I feel partly blessed that no one diagnosed me when I was young.
For the past 20 years, I've just handled pain as it came, and lived my life like I always lived it.
That is a double edged sword, however.

NOT KNOWING: I was able to live my life like any other young person. Eating what I wanted, drinking, etc.
BUT the trade off I didn't know I was making, led me to the present.

KNOWING: I just cannot imagine what it must be like to be young and faced with all of this.
It would have scared and depressed me also, especially since I had no handle on my anxiety then.
What a tough road for a young person to have to face.

I'm unsure what to tell you, since I did not face these questions at your age.
But I did think about what I would tell me, if I could peek into the past and give myself a heads up.

I would tell myself to go get diagnosed, to find a doctor that treated me like a partner in the management of my AS. Someone that discussed and explained in full, ALL options available to me, and encouraged me toward more natural, less invasive treatments. I would tell me that if I can learn to be preventative, maybe I won't be in so much pain later. To be proactive, as naturally as possible. To change my major, and take nutrition and culinary classes. To learn to cook starch free, and learn to make it delicious and easy for anyone to follow. To eat whole, raw foods as often as possible. To find farmers markets where I can get locally grown produce in season, and grass fed free range proteins. To drink a lot of water, especially if I take something for pain. To become a masseuse, start yoga and martial arts classes, and to learn to meditate. And most of all, to exhaustively research any path I may take, weigh the pros and cons, and make conscious, informed choices.

Though the changes would have initially been difficult, I would have met and been influenced by a whole other set of people.
New friends, new choices, new hobbies. All for the better, I think.

If I could really tell me these things, I might be a pain free culinary genius right now, making all of your lives SO much better!

Iritis first diagnosed in 1991, presently recurrent and steroid resistant.
Tested HLA B27 positive in 1996.
AS diagnosed October of 2011.

Putting most of my eggs in the NSD and exercise basket, using only TENS, massage, heat and ice, and NSAIDS (sparingly) for pain. Drops for iritis as flare necessitates. Looking back I feel I would have been diagnosed with AS years ago, if I had found a rheumy earlier than 2011.