The Walking Spondies have walked around the world, walked to the moon and now they are walking to Mars — all in the name of ankylosing spondylitis, a type of progressive arthritis due to chronic inflammation of the joints and spine that eventually fuses the spine.
It takes about 10 years to walk to Mars — which is the average number of years it takes for someone to be diagnosed with the disease, Walking Spondies founder Carrie Kellenberger says, because it is undetectable through x-rays or blood tests. In her case, it took 12 years.
The cause is unknown, and there is no cure.
Photo courtesy of the Walking Spondies
Tomorrow is World Ankylosing Spondylitis Day, and the Spondies are organizing a walk and potluck picnic at Da-an Forest Park (大安森林公園) to further the team’s step count. They have organized night walks in Taipei before, but this is their first daytime picnic event. Anyone can participate — the team will be gathering behind the children’s playground at 2pm.
The Walking Spondies are currently second place in the global Walk Your A.S. Off event, which takes place during May, with 5,617,695 steps. Kellenberger hopes that tomorrow’s event will boost that total by 80,000. The main goal is to raise awareness, though members can also raise funds if they want.
People walk for a many reasons, but Kellenberger says walking is especially symbolic for ankylosing spondylitis patients because it is the best and often the only exercise they can perform.
The earliest symptoms are persistent back pain in people between 17 and 35 years of age. They started for Kellenberger when she was 22 years old. One day, she woke up and was unable to put any weight on her foot. Another day, it was her arm.
The symptoms got worse until one day in 2009, she woke up to find her knee swollen to the size of a bowling ball. Tests for rheumatoid arthritis came back negative, and it was then that National Taiwan University Hospital staff finally made the diagnosis.
And Kellenberger says it has only gotten worse, as living with the disease means constant pain. She says painful flare ups can come out of nowhere, and last from days to years. Her current one has gone on for two years.
“That means I don’t get out of my house much,” she says. “My exercise level has dropped drastically in the past five years, and I used to be very athletic.”
Kellenberger says she has to plan every day out to make sure she has enough energy to deal with the pain and fatigue.
“I have to get a certain amount of sleep, follow a fairly strict diet and make sure I get out and walk,” she says. “Walking is really, really important ... even making time to get out for five or 10 minutes a day would be helpful with the disease.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist