Four years ago when I had an accident on the farm when I fell off the hay trailer but 1987 was when I first it hurt my back first of all in the [name] when I worked in the [name] It’s got a lot just I’ve had back trouble for years at the lower back but I’ve been getting back high trouble higher up my back and I’m on painkillers now. I have to take them when I need them.
How often do you need them?
Well I’m supposed to take them three times a day but I some days I take two a day all depends what pain I get.
What else do you do apart from taking painkillers? Do you rest? Do you lie down?
Well it’s [sighs] not really no because I mean at work I’m using a, you know, somedays I’ve got to pressure wash the parlour and stood working, backwards and forwards over the wall to clean all the cow crap off. Then me back start aching and I put up for so long then I end up having to put everything down and just leaning on something just, you know, relaxing it isn’t really but it’s something.
At work you lean on something?
Well, yeah, I lean on hay or anything, you know, you know, or even on a wall, you know, just leaning on and just relax basically, you know, until the pain just goes away a bit. I it’s gets to that part sometimes when I think, ‘Well I must be still alive because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be able to feel a thing.’ You know, stupid way to put it but. Anyway the job I work at do on the farm it’s like what I’m doing is cleaning out feeders like with a shovel about a seventy foot long feeder, cleaning out the feed, what they don’t, you know, what’s not been used or ditching like, you know, cleaning out mud with a shovel bending and that [sighs] I still do I’m determined I’m not going to give in, know what I mean? I just got to keep going as far as I can. I mean it’s doesn’t matter when it hurts even sat in a chair some days it hurts so whatever I do, you know, if I stands stand at the kitchen sink washing up in one place, the muscles tighten up and then I go and sit down or whatever, you know. So I mean it’s [sighs].
But it is affecting you at work?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot most of the time, not most of the time feel it quite often [sighs] but, you know, as I said when it get. Damp weather, damp cold weather it hurts, like this past week hasn’t been too bad.
I had I had a couple of times like I take a painkiller [sighs] relax like, you know, if I go home get dinner and what have you it goes off and then I go back to work start again and that. Some days it comes back on again like and I, you know, take another painkiller but I don’t want to appear, you know, proper pill popper, taking them willy nilly, you know.
Yeah, I don’t want to turn up, you know, like I said if I had that conscious thing where I’d hurt my back then I wouldn’t do anything. I won’t, you know, I say, ‘I can’t do that might hurt me back.’ You know, you know I just want to do it and if me back hurts well tough well, you know, yeah. And that that’s what’s annoying really that I’m trying to do what I want to do and I get this trouble in me back and I get and it’s a vicious circle sometimes [sighs].
