Near the Hills

Chronic back pain is something i have suffered for some time now and this week has been particularly bad. It began on Monday i had been trying to do the laundry and the normal day to day ache that i always had increased in severity until it was becoming unbearable. I take Co Dydramol 4 time daily to help with the day to day aching and have Tramadol for when the pain becomes bad. The thing about taking Tramadol though is that it really does help with the pain but i feel awful whilst taking it, i feel dizzy and unsteady on my feet, i also feel light headed and find it hard to concentrate on anything.

By Wednesday the pain was intense so much so that i was almost in tears, i had not slept properly for three days and i just felt so awful. But what can you do except keep taking the tablets in the hope the pain subsides to a more manageable level. Well by Friday it had and now on Sunday i am back to the normal dull aching which i can put up with. I hate these bouts of intense pain though and i really do try not to do too much as this is normally what brings it on, but hey i have to keep clean and i would not have thought doing a little laundry would leave me feeling like that.

This all began when i was in my twenties and i would lose a week or so from work each year when i would have chronic back pain, it would pass and i would return to work. This went on exactly the same until i was 41, at that age i had a small knife pushed into my lower back (another story for another time) and after healing i noticed that instead of the yearly loss of work for a week or so i began getting intense pain and being off work a 2 or 3 times a year now.

In 2002 aged 46 i was involved in a serious car accident, i was extremely lucky to survive, the car after the initial impact rolled a number of times before coming to rest upside down in a dyke. Well again after i healed and was deemed fit for work i went back but it was just awful every time i tried to work i would end up in severe pain. In fact for a year i was 1 or 2 weeks at work and then 3 weeks sick. as i say this went on for a year. My boss was very understanding but even so it was not fair on him or the company that i was always on the sick, eventually my GP came to the same conclusion and signed me as unfit for work permanently. I have seen a consultant and was told what was wrong and that there was no operation that could correct it, the consultant said that all he could offer was medication to manage the pain.

So this is where i am at now at 54 years of age unable to work and having to be careful of how much i do around the house, also i do not know if its as a result of the car accident or the medication or indeed my age but my short term memory is getting worse, so much so that if i do not write important things down then i forget them. Its awful to be like this. I get depressed at times especially during the winter months and for the most part i keep it to myself after all if i talk to the GP about it then all i will get is more tablets. Its hard to manage on what benefits i get they certainly do not replace a working wage and now with all the changes that the coalition government are making to try and sort the country out then as far as i can see things are not going to improve for me there.