"Knowledgeable, supportive and caring hydrotherapy staff"

I had been off work for more than a year with a complex rheumatoid arthritis flare up. Despite numerous courses of steroids and different biologic drugs I found day to day activities difficult and even just walking tiring and very problematic. While the stiffness and pain from my RA was somewhat helped by the drugs they weren’t able to help me rebuild strength and function after having being debilitated for so long.

It’s sounds twee but hydrotherapy changed my life. It helped me use my muscles correctly again and learn to walk more strongly, and with more stability. It helped to rebuild the strength in the lower half of my body and allowed me to get back to work after 15 months. It also helped me to understand my illness better, why I could do some things and not others, why some things hurt or were difficult and others weren’t by helping me understand the workings of my joints and muscles.

From being reliant on state benefits and my savings I was able to go back to work and regain a sense of purpose and independence again, and to once more feel like I was contributing to society. The drugs were obviously helpful to some extent but it was the hydrotherapy that gave me the strength, stability and confidence to get back to as normal as possible.

The staff in hydrotherapy were absolutely superb. Caryn, Blair and Alisdair were all knowledgeable, supportive and caring. They were always welcoming and genuine and had a real interest in my care and the improvement in my health and physical abilities. Due to my RA I’ve dealt with numerous doctors and associated medical professionals over the years and have rarely seen a group or people so committed and focused on patient care. I felt involved in the whole process and things were explained to me clearly throughout and they were encouraging and challenging when giving my activities.

While the staff were absolutely stellar there are issues with the wider availability and access of Hydrotherapy. As far as I’m aware Paisley has the only hydro pool in the health board area and it’s only operational 3 days a week. I know there’s another pool at my local hospital (Inverclyde Royal) that’s has been out of commission for some time, it would have been great if I could have went to a more local facility, saving time, fuel and environmental impact. The lack of facilities and time limits the amount of people that are able to access the service and reduce the number of patients that’s are able to benefit from the activity.

It feels ill thought out to have such a transformative service limited by budget constraints and would urge a rethink or at least a discussion at a strategic level to look into the long term viability of a more robust and available hydrotherapy service throughout the GG&C health board. I’m sure you’d be able to get valuable feedback from patients who’ve seen their lives improve greatly due to hydrotherapy and would gladly volunteer to help.

To Caryn, Blair and Alasdair, thank you so much, you’ve made a huge difference to my life.

To the board of GG&C please consider the impact hydrotherapy has on individual lives and work to improve the accessibility and availability to patients who might be able to benefit.