Research saved the day for RCMP Sergeant

It’s hard to remember when I didn’t have some back problems. I had done some heavy manual labour as a teenager so when, age 35, and 15 years after joining the police force I found myself with regular back pain and stiffness, I simply attributed it to pushing my back too hard early on. But it never got better. I took to standing up at a counter to fill out paper work and getting out of my police car to walk off the stiffness. Finally, after finding myself rolling out of bed onto all fours in the middle of the night, pulling myself half standing by holding on to the dresser and with shooting pains in my legs now a regular occurrence, I succumbed to my wife’s constant demand and talked to my doctor. That was 1984.

He sent me for tests and referrals and over the next 5 years I was offered a variety of treatments but nothing helped. Then, in 1989, luck was on my side. A sharp chiropractor I was seeing noticed that I was not responding to his treatments and went over my symptoms. Noting that I got worse when in bed, felt much better while exercising and playing hockey, that hot showers were a relief and aspirin in big quantities helped, he told me to go see a rheumatologist. Off I went, and two times lucky, met Dr. Alice Klinkhoff at the Mary Pack Arthritis Centre. In five minutes she said I know what you have. It was Ankylosing Spondylitis (commonly called AS), one in a family of arthritis chronic inflammatory diseases.

AS causes the ligaments of the spinal column to become inflamed and immobile, eventually causing them to begin to turn into bone. Untreated, AS will fuse the disks together, usually in a manner that causes the patient to hunch over while losing the ability to straighten up or turn their upper body and head. There is no cure, but becoming crippled is not a foregone conclusion as long as you receive medication and use an exercise regimen.

The standard drug therapy for AS is non-steroidal anti-inflamatories (NSAIDs), a not too costly group of drugs that slow the inflammation, reduce pain and allow the patient to do their exercises, but they are not without side effects, like stomach ulcers and sometimes, even more serious consequences. NSAIDs worked fine for me but, luck being something that comes and goes, I was hit with one of the serious side effects. My kidneys began to fail. So, to save me from dialysis I was taken off NSAIDs and my AS came back with a vengeance. A newer drug followed and worked for a while but the kidney trouble returned. It looked like I was destined for a much less than satisfactory quality of life and an end to my police career.

But, science, or rather scientists, came to my rescue. A small group of new drugs, commonly called biologics, came on the market. They were, and remain, very expensive but I had my police medical coverage and in 1998 I started 3 hours of intravenous drip every 8 weeks. I was able to remain at work with some adjustments to my day-to-day duties and retired in 2005 after nearly 36 years.

I still do the intravenous treatments and expect to for the rest of my life. My kidneys, although damaged, remain okay. The disease has stabilized and I just passed 25 years playing with the same recreational hockey team (a form of exercise admittedly not on my doctor’s list of favorites). My quality of life is as good as one can expect after 25 plus years with a chronic disease. My private insurance covers 80 per cent of the $2000.00 per treatment my biologic costs, and in 2008 the BC provincial government designated biologic drugs as a treatment for AS which will be a financial lifesaver for people less fortunate than me. Research is a costly undertaking with more failures than successes, but without it I would certainly be one of the losers, instead of one of the winners.

Don Bindon is a retired RCMP Sergeant and President of the Ankylosing Spondylitis Association of BC, a volunteer organization devoted to making life better for people suffering with AS and related diseases.