AMA 16y "studying" AS

A bit about me first: I'm currently 16 years old and had my first symptoms since I was 10, though I got my first really affected joint at 15. Currently I mostly deal with enthesitis.

My doctor unfortunately isn't the easiest one to deal with, and I'm bad at keeping an eye on my symptoms 🫣. This led me to create a minor tool to actually pin point my pain onto a body map so I could show him what was going on – cool enough, this little thing helped me quite a bit with my diagnosis.

In November I was working on a project with a few buddies of mine, though flares and fatigue caught up to me which led me to stop.

Nevertheless this burned one thought into my head.. what if we could actually get to know what makes us flare and when we're likely to get one – so we don't miss out on the moments we love most, or could get out of the "nothing works" cycle :/

This sparked me to actually try creating an app to track symptoms, get a little graphic for the doc, and future-wise be able to help us with the unknown. So now I'm currently "studying" (not at uni – still in high school lol) reading papers & exchanging thoughts with rheumatologists kind of became the daily routine though 🤣

!!!Not medical advice, always ask your rheumatologist!!!!

One thing that would also interest me: have you been able to discover a life-changing trigger?

On the bright side, I'd love to discuss everything with you all – from tracking apps to enthesitis.. whatever you're wondering about :)