Early Signs and Symptoms

Hope it's ok to post this here.

I was wondering if people could tell me what the signs were for them when they first started noticing symptoms?

I'm a 44 year old woman, if that makes any difference.

I'm considering trying to get an appointment with my GP (I'm in the UK) to discuss whether I might have AS. I've been struggling for the last few months first with hip pain, which turned out to be inflammation of the bursa, but also with sciatica, which my physio thought was probably unrelated. The hip pain is mostly gone now, but I am still waking up a lot in the night with sciatica down my right leg, and I've noticed I have a very sore patch at the bottom of my spine, which is always worse at night. It eases off a bit as the day progresses once I'm up and about. Stretching and exercising seems to help during the day, but doesn't affect it at night.

I tried deep tissue massage the other day, which helped all my muscles a lot, but did absolutely nothing for the sore patch on my spine.

The reason I jumped to AS as a possible diagnosis is because about ten years ago, I had a sudden bout of uvetis/iritis in my left eye, which recurred again about a year later. At the time, I was told that iritis was often a sign of other autoimmune conditions, such as AS, but they weren't able to find anything then and I was told it was probably just idiopathic. But now I'm wondering if that was an early sign.

Obviously, I'm not asking anyone here to diagnose me! I just wondered whether this sounds possible, based on your own experiences, as if it doesn't sound anything like AS, I may take a different route to try to figure out what the issue is.

Thanks in advance.