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.”
As I finally slid into the warm embrace of the hot, clifftop pool, it was a serene moment of reflection. The sound of the river reflected off the cave walls, the white of our camping lights reflected off the dark, shimmering surface of the water, and I reflected on how fortunate I was to be here. After all, the beautiful walk through narrow canyons that had brought us here had been inaccessible for five years — and will be again soon. The day had started at the Huisun Forest Area (惠蓀林場), at the end of Nantou County Route 80, north and east
Specialty sandwiches loaded with the contents of an entire charcuterie board, overflowing with sauces, creams and all manner of creative add-ons, is perhaps one of the biggest global food trends of this year. From London to New York, lines form down the block for mortadella, burrata, pistachio and more stuffed between slices of fresh sourdough, rye or focaccia. To try the trend in Taipei, Munchies Mafia is for sure the spot — could this be the best sandwich in town? Carlos from Spain and Sergio from Mexico opened this spot just seven months ago. The two met working in the
A six-episode, behind-the-scenes Disney+ docuseries about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week: Chip and Joanna Gaines take on a big job revamping a small home in the mountains of Colorado, video gamers can skateboard through hell in Sam Eng’s Skate Story and Rob Reiner gets the band back together for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. MOVIES ■ Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man
Exceptions to the rule are sometimes revealing. For a brief few years, there was an emerging ideological split between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that appeared to be pushing the DPP in a direction that would be considered more liberal, and the KMT more conservative. In the previous column, “The KMT-DPP’s bureaucrat-led developmental state” (Dec. 11, page 12), we examined how Taiwan’s democratic system developed, and how both the two main parties largely accepted a similar consensus on how Taiwan should be run domestically and did not split along the left-right lines more familiar in
RSS