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Chronic PainArrow
Age 41-60
Interview CP15  

Interview CP15

Age at Interview: 42
Sex: Female
Background: Scientist; single; 1 child.
Brief outline:Pins and needle, numbness and neck pain since 1996. Surgery: Neck surgery for cervical mylenopathy. Treatment: Physiotherapy before and after surgery. Pain Clinic given oral steroids. Pain management: NHS outpatient pain management programme. Current medication: gabapentin, amitriptyline.


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Her company has a good sick pay policy and she has a good salary but chronic pain still affects her financially.

 



I've been very, very lucky, when I was off on sick leave I get full pay for six months and then I go onto half pay for another, indefinitely actually. It's changed within our company so I have very good healthcare. Also because working for a company we get private healthcare but sadly I didn't, that wasn't recognised for my condition until after surgery so... but before then it was financially draining because I was paying privately to go to a chiropractor. 

After surgery it was very expensive because I was going for acupuncture and I was going for therapeutic massage and it did drain my finances and basically you have to choose literally between doing one thing or another so I find that while I was paying to have a personal trainer to help me with my exercise so I didn't do any further damage or make my pain worse and then I was paying for a session that was like £60 a week you multiply that by 4, there's not very many people who could afford to have that amount of money of their income on a regular basis. 

But basically when I did that I did nothing else. The personal training when I was off work that was different. I didn't do that because I was in the gym at very quiet times so the trainers that were there worked one-to-one with me but they, the therapeutic massage and acupuncture did drain me financially particularly because I am on my own with, with my son and whilst I get maintenance from, from my son's dad it doesn't compensate that's [son's name]'s childcare or my son's childcare costs so I think in one way I've been very fortunate. 

I've not lost any pay because of my illness and when I went back, I went back I worked I think I worked up until 3 o'clock. We, we had a staggered regime that I talked through with Personnel that when I went back to work I didn't keep to it and I ended up making myself very ill with pain so I had to almost reset the clock again because I didn't do the hours I was meant to do I did double. 

So I've been lucky I think because I have a profession. I think again my salary was maybe in the ball mark that makes it easier for me to cope but I did have to give up to have those things but I felt it was worthwhile because pain was so big in my life at that time that it was important to address it but for example now I would like to but I've committed myself to other things which financially means I can't afford to go and have the therapeutic massage and to be honest for, for someone I think with chronic pain it would have to be on a weekly basis. 

Because normally they would only have to do like very small not manipulation but be very gentle with you and gradually built up because if they go too far then you end up exacerbating the pain and making it much worse. So you basically have to build up and it takes many weeks before you get the relief but when I did do it I did it for a long time and on some occasions it was twice a week, I did find it helpful eventually. I didn't think it was doing anything at the time but it did. So it's something I think was really worthwhile but expensive. 
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