My Typical appointment is.

Discusses pain levels.

Physically determines my join flexibility for most joints.

Verifies my progress and makes sure my symptoms are minimum.

Does blood and urine work every appointment.

Verifies I am continuing all my medications.

May adjust meds accordingly.

Asked if I have any questions or concerns.

Sends me to schedule another appointment in 6 months.

Sounds monotonous and dull.

However it's been rinse and repeat for 6 years now. Sometimes with more than 3 or 4 appointment a year.

I'm a little past the beginning faze as grim as it sounds.

Though it is mandatory to have a check up so my Dr. can continue prescribing my biologic inhibitor for suppressing AS.

My rheumatologist asks about my medicine, my pain, and how I have been doing since he saw me last. He checks my common joint areas for my conditions and has me tell him if he is hurting me. He will have me do blood work if my medicine requires checking it, but I am not on any biologics. He has me do a yearly blood work to see how I am progressing. He recently had to send me over to a joint surgeon, who sent me for physical therapy and pain management (shots into the area) because I was having issues with my neck and upper back. He sees me about every 6 months unless we are changing or balancing my medicine, which we do about every other year.

Everything Steve mentioned, but mine does ultrasound exams of my hands/wrists and feet/ankles to look for changes to determine if my Psoriatic Spondylitis has progressed. Psoriatic Spondylitis is slightly different from Ankylosing Spondylitis and frequently involves the periphery joints as much as, sometimes worse than, the spine. What i dont like is that there is no routine testing to determine which biologic is appropriate for patients. Its a hit or miss stab in the dark hoping something sticks and works for awhile. Some get lucky and find one that works for them for a long time, years if they're really lucky, with no side affects worse than the disease. From reading posts of other patients in this and a few other forums I've been on, most patients are like me, don't find a biologic that works and suffer organ damage, even failure, from the biologics. If you're considering a biologic it's worth paying out of pocket for a cytokine panel first to determine if you even need one and which one will actually work for you. For the most part, they all only target one cytokine, and the human body can produce hundreds of different types. I did a great deal of reaearch into this for a couple years. Let me know if you want more details. 😌🙏

Ditto to everyone else