I am a 41 year old woman who through multiple trials and triumphs has an amazing story to tell. After surviving and ultimately leaving an extremely abusive relationship I became a single mom to a special needs child. While raising her I attended KSU and finally graduated with my B.S. In Human services with a Specialization in case management in May of 2006. In 2009 after fighting to get my daughter the help she needed with no success, she ultimately ended up hospitalized where they gave her a tentative diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. Then in 2014 after getting remarried and landing the job of my dreams of working with autistic kids and passing my GACE exam and getting accepted into the program to teach TAPP, life was looking up as my daughter finally had a correct diagnosis of autism or PDD (nos) and married life and my job were awesome. Then in May of 2014 my life changed forever when I got sick and nobody knew why. Now, over a year later I have been told I have an auto-immune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis otherwise known as (A.S.) which is a disease that causes extreme pain & damage in the large joints of your body and currently has no cure. A hard pill to swallow when you go from running 6 miles a day to barely getting out of bed some days. I was waiting on my first spinal surgery when I originally opened my about.me page and I just now on September 17th, 2019 had my fifth major spinal surgery. After much care and deliberation by my doctors I've been told I can never work again in a special education classroom, my true passion, so now I devote my time to teaching kids in China English online so I can still fulfill my passion of teaching children.

UPDATE: 12/18/19 I now spend my free time learning and educating others on my disease Ankylosing sponsylitis or AS. There is so much still necessary to learn about this disease. I have had 5 major spinal surgeries since I first posted on the about.me website. I am under the care of a great team of doctors from my incredible spinal surgeon down to my amazing rheumatologist. There is no other team of doctors I would let be on my care team. I hope this blog can be both a healthy way to process living with a chronic and/or terminal illness and also offerencouragement for someone else who might be dealing with this same disease and all of its hardships and challenges that are common yet so incredibly heart breaking when trying to live our best lives with AS

XOXO,

Ives