Once upon a time on usenet Iain Churches wrote:
tiistai 25. heinäkuuta 2017 6.56.31 UTC+3 ~misfit~ kirjoitti:

Yes. Alas 20 years of chronic back pain, reduced mobility and the
massive drop in income has limited my experience to what I can see
in my home. :-/

Sorry to hear that. Is this the result of your hard physical work
with the band?

Thanks. No I don;t think so. It was a freak occurance in 1995. I was going
to the neighbours over the back (1.8m) fence and the far side was smooth so
I 'vaulted' over and the ground on the far side was uneven and I landed
wrong. The resulting jar to my back ruptured L5 / S1 completely and also
damaged the next three discs up.

I've always had a high tolerace for pain so didn't cry to doctors too much
and so never got a proper scan. In the 18 months to two years before all of
the fluid leaked and was absorbed by my body I could go to a chiropracter
every 4 months or so and get it re-aligned. After there was no disc as such
left that was no longer possible and I was left with bone-on-bone at L5/S1
with pinched nerves.

Unfortunately it happened about 6 months after I'd invested everything I had
(and could raise) into setting up a business that, after a period of
establishment would have been very successful. By the time I realised I
could no longer do the work it was too late. I had no health insurance
(other than what the state provides) and there was no resale value of the
plant so I lost my 'life savings' too. I'd pushed through the pain hoping I
could get to the point where the business was making money but my back
slowed me down to much and failed too soon...

I didn't get an MRI done until 2014, 19 years after the injury. As I'd been
able to push through the pain for a few years and don't show how much I'm
hurting I was largey ignored by doctors. By the time I was unable to work
and sought proper care I was largely treated as a malingerer and/or "drug
seeker" for over a decade untilI found one good doctor who believed me and
pushed for the imaging.

I've tried a few things in the intervening years, trying to find a way to
make a living with my mind but when you're in pain you lose a lot of your
mental faculties. If I'm lucky I get a couple of hours a day when I can move
relatively well and don't feel too fatigued to think straight and get a few
things done. I'm single and live alone, always thought I'd look to settling
down and family when I had a decent stable income sorted...

Then 18 months ago the next disc up ruptured. I have seen a few state-funded
specialists but there's no impartial information available. If I visit a
surgeon he wants to cut (as he gets paid for that), if I see the TFESI guy
he just want's to give me TransForminal Steroid Epideural Injections (as he
gets paid for that) and he tells me that the available surgical options
aren't suitable in my case.... There is nobody with the relevant training
and information who I can see (funded - and I have no funds of my own amy
more) who has *my* best interests as their primary objective and every
option available to me has some pretty big downsides...

Sorry, sad story I don't usually share. I try to keep my mind occupied as
best I can with low-cost 'projects' etc.

These are very different times to the late 70s / early 80s. ;-)
--
Indeed. Trucks have hydraulic tail lifts, forklifts, and freight
cases have large wheels. But the amount of equipment a band now
carries is far greater.

Very true. I'd love to have got my hands on the sort of equiment available
these days back in the day. Not just on the audio side but stage lighting as
well. The intense colours that you can get quite cheaply with LEDs these
days (and being able to use pre-programmed sequences) would be awesome to
use.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy
little classification in the DSM*."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)