"Now have more understanding of my pain"

I recently attended Living with Pain Service meetings at Horton Park Avenue Surgery to help me understand my pain and how to manage it better to improve my lifestyle, as I have lived with chronic pain for over 10 years.

Among the staff were Physiotherapists, Psychologists and a Doctor who specialised in pain management.

I went into this set of meetings which lasted a few weeks not knowing how it would go and what it entailed, but was very surprised when I found that nearly all the people in our group were not just my age (60) but there were some young people too.

What I didn't expect was the fun we had discussing our pain and different ways of managing it.

Everyone who attended had different ways of coping with pain and we each helped one another in some ways by suggesting different coping mechanisms.

The doctor who came to discuss our medications helped immensely by discussing in detail why we were prescribed certain meds and not others and how these meds worked in our bodies and suggested different things for us to do.

I went for the final catch up this week and met people from other groups and we brought different ideas that were very helpful to us all.

I found this Service extremely helpful and I wish that something like this would have been suggested to me years ago.

It would be a tragedy if funding for this service was cut as it is a lifeline for people with chronic pain.

Anything that can help us to manage our pain better and not keep going to the doctors or hospitals has got to be a good thing surely.

A big thank you to everyone involved in this - you know who you are - I am very grateful to you all.