Back pain is perhaps the commonest problem facing our society. Some eighty per cent of the population suffer from back troubles sooner or later. Hundreds of working hours a year are lost due to back pain.
The last forty years of my life has been spent going from one hospital to another with severe spinal disabilities.
Here are just some of the things I have experienced.
Four spinal operations, plaster jackets, plaster bed, hip spiker, myelogram, manipulations, acupuncture, epidurals, physiotherapist, pain killers, M.R.I. scans, many seek remedies from every quarter and many become anxious and depressed and of course this exacerbates the severity of the problem.
Wherever I have been I have been treated with the utmost care and attention from the surgeons and nursing staff.
I once received a letter from David Blunkett the Health Minister at that time and Arachnoiditis was mentioned quite often, which I had never heard of. Patients may be treated as the forgotten minority by the bulk of the population who suffer no more than minor inconvenience.
I pray no-one has to go through years of pain which can be very excruciating.
JOYCE PATON
Callington.