Living with multiple health problems
When treatments only go so far
Some of the people we interviewed described limitations of treatments, such as those that did not work, only worked for so long (see ‘Different views on prescribed medicines’), or could not be used due to existing conditions and/or prescribed medicines. John was one of the people who said that the drugs he had taken had not made any difference, in his case pain relief for a back problem. He also described how there is sometimes nothing more that can be done following previous operations. John also mentions how the relief of pain after an operation (in his case on his spine), can be short lived. Kevin already had a metal plate screwed into his hip which made further surgery potentially too complicated. Jean had been told that she could not have heart surgery as she would not be able to cope with a general anaesthetic.
A surgeon has told John there is nothing else that can be done for his back pain. A hip operation would not help as his condition is caused by trapped nerves, not joint problems.
A surgeon has told John there is nothing else that can be done for his back pain. A hip operation would not help as his condition is caused by trapped nerves, not joint problems.
Makes it worse. I’ve been through the NICE recommended…
Right.
…back pain physiotherapy, and it makes it worse [laughs], so that’s the problem. The surgeon who did the original work on my back says there’s nothing more he can do… and he’s not an orthopaedic surgeon, he’s a neurosurgeon and one of the, the most highly regarded neurosurgeons in the area. If he says that nothing more can be done, got to accept it. And, um, that’s the problem. I’ve tried these support corset things. The only trouble is you try to sit down and they ride up, so they finish up [laughs], they actually finish up under your armpits…
In terms of painkillers I have had the epidural injections into the spine twice. Neither of them didn’t work.
They didn’t do anything at all.
Have you been told what the cause of the back trouble was?
Yeah. Basically all…most of my lumbar discs don’t exist. They’ve been mashed up. Probably because of all the driving and…I did and the fact that some of the work that I did quite often involved squeezing through small spaces sort of thing, particularly when I was working as a consultant in the brewing industry, in, in microbiology, I was climbing in and out of beer vessels and tanks and things to, to take samples in there, climbing up, yeah, climbing them twisting them, whatever. Yeah. But whatever it was then the discs were mashed up, and the, I don’t know what the technical term is, but the holes in the spine that the nerves come out of were… at the lumbar end again were blocked basically, and they were pushing on the nerves. They were cleared out, as I say, by the neurosurgeon, but that only lasted about five years. So I get what most people would describe as sciatica although it’s… I… it’s not only on the back part of my legs, I also get it on the femoral nerve, particularly the right hand side, as well. So it’s…which is like sticking red hot needles in. Most people… Anybody who’s had sciatica knows what it feels like, but I get it front and back. And, as I say, the… from that possibly the tendons tend to tighten up, because that’s a normal body reaction to pain… so that kind of locks my, my hip movement, even though I have normal hip movement. It’s not a joint problem. You know, most people with hip problems, new hip, fine, go away. A new hip wouldn't make any difference to me.
Surgeons would only give Kevin a “fifty-fifty” chance of an operation on his hip being successful as there is already a metal plate attached from previous surgery for Perthes disease.
Surgeons would only give Kevin a “fifty-fifty” chance of an operation on his hip being successful as there is already a metal plate attached from previous surgery for Perthes disease.
Well, I normally get stiff in my, with my left hip.
Right.
And I gets a lot of pain, because it’s the same when they’re in the…it’s only like, get a really sharp pain and I can’t move, laying on… laying on my left side to ease the pain off and take some paracetamols.
So the hip that’s causing you the problem is not the same hip that you had a problem with when you were younger…oh, it is the same one?
Yeah.
So that’s, kind of, gone on over the… over the years.
Yeah. I’m still under [a hospital], but they won’t do the operation, they would only… they would only give me fifty/fifty.
What a fifty/fifty chance of it working or…
Yeah.
…a fifty/fifty chance of you being alive afterwards?
Well they said it could be walking again or else I’ll end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, so…
Right. And would you have preferred to have the operation then, do you think? Did they try to put you off?
I think they… I think they tried putting me off a little bit, because they would only give me, like, fifty/fifty and I wasn’t, happy. So I walked away out there and so I saw another doctor and he said, he said we could do the operation, but he said it would be… because there’s a plate I’ve got in there now, they’ll have a job to remove it.
Right.
And the, because I’ve got three screws in my… in the plate on… in the plate as well.
Right. And the plate is related to this…
Perthes Disease.
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