Community Voices

Kristen Ray My journey with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) has been very long, my first memories of symptoms starting at around age 6. Back then AS was only considered to be a man’s disease, it wasn’t until the…

My symptoms began when I was 16 in the year of 2014. I would miss weeks of school because the pain was too much to handle. I was called names and a druggie because I was losing…

Co-Founder of Spondylitis Association of America, The first President of the Board of Directors and the first Executive Director In 1983, when I co-founded this organization, there was no information available about AS – not a single…

My AS story began when I was a 19 year old missionary in England, pounding the pavement all day every day...

My memory of that day in 1997 centers around driving home on I-295 in Portland, in the Fore River area; that’s when the words I’d just heard took hold. “You have been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis.”

The slums of Kolkata birthed me. She left me in a clinic abandoned and alone. That is how my life began.