Interview CP33

Age at interview: 41

Brief Outline:

Back, leg and shoulder pain following road traffic accident 1986. Treatments: Nurse led pain clinic for advice and medication. Current medication: amitriptyline, co-codomal. Past medication: opioid (Diconal), diazepam, temazepam.

Background:

Unemployed plant mechanic; married; 3 children, 2 stepchildren.

Finds the TENS machine easy to use but says it is not practical to carry it about all the time.

The TENS machine, is a small electrical device that sends out pulses... electricity, whether it's current or voltage or whatever, it's a very, very small amount, so I find it's not actually dangerous and this machine, I would say is pocket sized actually but it's got cables and it's got sticky pads that you place on areas or the surrounding areas to give an electrical pulse, or a rhythm that's required. 

I can set this to time it myself and I find it really does aid the worst of my pain when I'm actually using it and I find that a device that should probably be looked into further for some kind of aid, especially as it's, you're not actually taking anything orally that could maybe effect you like any kind of other day to day business that you may be doing, like driving or whatever or operating machinery. But the only thing with it is, it's not really that practical to be carrying about with you all the time.

Used to drink alcohol in the hope it would help his pain but realised it just made him abusive.

I used to take drink in the belief that it would kind of aid me. In the short time it did aid myself but I was told that I was quite an unsavoury character when I had too much drink and instead of suppressing any pain it was maybe bringing out pain, so a lot of people were subjected to something that I would otherwise try and disguise myself.  

It would actually come out because my tongue was a bit looser or whatever through the alcohol. So I would say possibly I was more abusive when I had alcohol in my system and the way I can try and contain any kind of pain was kind of released, so, but, I would feel maybe the next few days, I would feel fine, I would seem to have had something off my kind of chest, I would feel relieved that I'd got something out or whatever, but I believe that I possibly caused quite a bit of damage with how it was actually put forward.  

So I mean I decided that I was not going to over drink, that wasn't going to solve the kind of problem or whatever and I've just lived hoping that something could be found that could kind of ease the pain and up to now the best that I've actually had has been the TENS machine.
 

Feels that while people can understand a broken leg they don't understand chronic pain and how it...

Well, it affects my relationships because I don't feel there's an understanding when I meet people or I've been introduced to people. Maybe on my behalf I don't push that forward enough to them and maybe the other friends that I'm with they're not conveying that to other people that I'm round about and maybe they don't even understand that they maybe dealt with a sore, kind of sore head or something like that or even a broken limb, but in the main these things heal up, you've got pain for a few weeks, but they heal up and that's usually the end of the pain. 

But this is a thing I've been pained for almost 17 years now, and I've had other injuries and whatever on top of but this I'm carrying, but they come and go but it always come back to this original kind of pain. And I believe that new friends, I can understand them not knowing, but maybe people that's known me for a long time, I feel they don't understand that a pain can last that long.  

To me it's like the same thing as a broken leg or it's a sore head, it'll be there for a wee while or 'oh there, there, that's a wee shame but it'll get better in a wee while' but they don't seem to understand that this is a lingering thing, the pain that I feel and it's a burden sort of thing.  

So I find it hard for them to take it basically in, what I suffer, and the only kind of pointers they seem to see in me is if I'm quite crabbit or whatever, because I probably do try to bare a face on things and go well everything's OK and whatever and try not to complain too often but it's something that I've got and I feel, in the main, they don't have it and it's, they'll not understand it properly that this is a thing that happens to people. If they could be more understanding of this.