Interview CP40

Age at interview: 63

Brief Outline: Abdominal pain since 1988, no diagnosis. Treatments: Nerve block to pancreas. Pain Clinic for medication. Current Medication: tramadol. Past medication: Tried stronger opioids could not tolerate side effects.

Background: Retired agricultural worker; married; 4 children.

Adjusts his medication so that he can last through social events.

But, I go out to a lot of functions, what I tend to do now when I go out, when I know I'm going out to maybe the wife's sister's birthday or somebody's anniversary or something like that, what I do is I leave off my medication during the day, some of the day, I maybe just take one capsule after my dinner or something, and we generally go out about 8 o'clock or half past eight at night. 

And what I do is I take a capsule, a couple of capsules, a painkiller at 7 o'clock, and I'll go out and I'll be fine, I'll be just the same as everybody else and during the course of the evening, or during the course of the day or whatever time it is, using the evening as just an example, 7 o'clock, by 10 o'clock I'm right in amongst the rest of the people like I said. 

I don't do a lot of dancing anyway because I'm not able, but I enjoy myself, go for a game of pool with me brother-in-law, we have a laugh, we have a carry on. At 10 o'clock or half past ten, because I know these parties goes on until 1 o'clock in the morning most of the time, I will keep the pill back that I had from dinnertime, I will take that painkiller about half past ten or eleven o'clock at night just to keep me from beginning to feel very unwell and out of sorts, because I'm in my wife's company and there's a lot of them, and that's the way I do it, that's the way I manage to go from staying in the house and grumping at everybody to going out and greeting everybody, and speaking to everybody. I control it with the amount of pills I take during the day.

He has very few side effects from tramadol but had a very bad reaction to strong opioid drugs.

Do you experience any side effects from the tramadol? 

No, not a lot, no. Nothing compared with the rest, I mean they're, the other painkillers I was taking like Diconal, like the Oxynorm and the Oxycontin I was prescribed, I mean, they put you in a different world altogether, they just, you were thinking and trying to do things that you weren't capable of doing. 

I mean, I found this happening, as I said, I shouldn't be feeling this way, this is not a way the medication is meant to work, its meant to be helping me stomach, its not meant to be affecting me in this other way, its meant to be sorting out the problem in the stomach, but its not, its affecting the rest of my body, its making me want to do things I don't want to do, like drive my car into a wall or something you know, along that kind of lines or I'll jump off a roof or something or, or go and swim 100 miles.

I mean, something that you wasn't able to do, and it makes you feel so stupid but only within myself because I didn't react outwardly to the effect the pills was having on me. I tried to keep it to within myself, I just tried to shut my eyes and forget about it when this kind of medication happens, and I'd just say, 'Well I'm sorry, I can't take these any more' and when that kind of thing starts happening, and my wife will tell you, I'd just go straight back to the doctor and give him the pills back, and I'd say, 'I don't want anymore, keep your pills, I don't want them' and then we've got to start from scratch again.

Realised he would drive his family away unless he could control the aggression which was brought...

What affect has it had on the family? Virtually they have they've been very, very good, I have to admit they've been very good. At times I know I've been really horrid with them, and I mean they don't come oft... visit very, very oft... I mean don't get me wrong, we're a close-knit family, my four boys and my wife and myself, we are very close together nothing can happen to one that the rest are not involved in, you know what I mean, because I could go on a long story with that, especially when I had my heart attacks I could tell you a lot of things about that but, that's a different story. 

No what I resented most about the pain was I was doing something that I would never ever normally do, I'd bark, I'd be aggressive with my family, even my own wife, she often says to me, 'Oh there's no sense speaking to you like you are today', and that's the stage that I was at, for they knew what kind of an answer they were going to get from me because the pain was so intense that I just didn't have any time for anybody. 

I just wanted to be on my own and left to see if I could get some kind of relief so I could come back and talk to them for a while before they went away, but it never ever, it never always worked out that way, touch wood at the moment.

And I did come to the stage where I said to them, I said, I have to try and get this under control because its going to lead to friction, its going to cause a lot of problems if I do not pull together, and I'm going to cause my family to stay away, they are not going to come and see me, and I'll no see my grandchildren and I can't afford to do that because they are my grandchildren, and I'm only here for a certain amount of time. 

And I don't want them growing up to think that I'm a, I've been like this all me life sort of thing or all their life sort of thing, a continual person that you cannot talk to, a person that's always grumpy when you come and see them, a person that's always in a bad mood, sort of thing, I don't want that for my grandchildren. 

My boys they're enough, they're old enough to, they know now that I've been a dad and all like, but just like in the past couple of years I would think that they've come to realise, they've got to know that I was in a lot of pain and I've been suffering a lot of pain for a few years, and like I said, I've got a control now where they can come in and sit and talk and have a laugh and that with them, and I don't let anything bother me.

Started a computer course at college and bought a computer and finds this and his other hobbies a...

Well there, I joined a college last year to take my mind off things during the week when there's nobody here, when my wife's away working and things like that, I started at the college and I said to my wife, 'I'm joining the college, I'm meeting a lot of people and its passing the times of the day and I'm learning', and she said 'Right' and I let it go like that and I said, 'I think I'll buy a computer' and she was totally against it. 

She says, 'You'll no sit at the computer five minutes, you haven't done anything like that for years, you haven't, you haven't, in the past couple of years, you haven't set your mind to anything in the past couple of years what makes you think you're going to sit at a computer?' I says, 'Well if I do not do something pal I'm going to go up the wall with pain if I don't' so she said, 'Look, we'll have it' and I bought my computer and I'm still going to college, I'm enjoying my college I just passed the first pass of my first two degrees this year, I got them through the Scottish qualifying authority in August.  

I started a new program there I'm getting on with that. I'm never away from my computer at nights, I go up my shed and do the jobs that I want to do. I have another hobby, which is building model cars, which I build up, I maybe collect about four or five and then I'll spend every second night building them up bit by bit, and then I'll work on the computer a while, and I'll go back in the shed and we may go out for a drive, anything to keep me from thinking about this pain, because thinking about it, sitting here the way I am now, if I was to do this in the evening, I would be, I would need the doctor before I went to my bed, it's as simple as that.