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People's stories

Aged 46 - 55

Andy - Interview 04

Andy - Interview 04

Age at Interview: 52
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 52
Background: Andy is a supply manager in IT and is married with two adult children (twins aged 24). Ethnic background/Nationality: White British.

Brief outline:Andy has chronic pain as well as diabetes which was diagnosed six months ago. His medication includes Avandamet [rosiglitazone + metformin], simvastatin, Xenical, perindopril, amlodipine and doxazosin.

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Andy works in IT and now finds it hard to read from the computer screen which is stressful.
Print The most difficult thing for me workwise, forget the getting over the side effects of the tablets, that's just a period of uncomfortableness; stomach aches and all the rest of it, it's the fact that I work on computers, and I can't read the computer screen. My eyesight is either going from long sighted to short sighted or its in between, and I'm just struggling to focus on the computer screen. I'm sitting about this far from the computer screen. I'm taking my glasses off. I'm constantly having to adjust where I sit and how I how I adapt to the screen and it's just a nightmare. It's the most difficult thing. You go to meetings and I sometimes I'm writing like that, sometimes I'm writing like that and trying to take notes. And someone says, 'Come and look at this on the screen', and I can't because I can't read it. I have to sort of stick my head in front of theirs. And I'm also, we've got an awful lot of fluorescent lights at work and I've found that I've become very much more sensitive to the fluorescent lights, so I have to upset all my neighbours by having the lights turned off where I sit. Whereas everybody else likes it nice and bright, I don't want it bright. So it creates little tensions and little niggles.

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