Last Friday, at Cherry Tree Hospital, working on our pilot ‘Patience project, we sat with a fantastic group of 9 older people all on the ‘Rehabilitation Ward’. We discussed what it feels like to live with pain, I found them to be inspirational in their attitudes, some had had a lifetime of pain, others living in retirement with it. Here are a few quotes:
“day by day, hope the next day will be a little bit better.”
“it’s a great thing when you can jump out of it, the body can be a prison sometimes”
“fight against it all the time, it will come never the less.”
“can’t move like I used to, must be something stopping me”
“hope and pray, they find a cure”
“tormenting irritation”
“best thing to try and think about other things, mind can conquer your body, can’t come easily though”
“got to make the most of what we’ve got”
“and hope the pain, next day is a little better, pills by the bucketful”
“it’d be like no end, there’d be no end to it, I’m on fire, I really feel it burns and hurts’
“an all over feeling, makes you depressed, you have to block it out”
we finished the session with a look at my collection of old medical tins, which everyone enjoyed, reminiscing about everything from Fennings Fever Cure, to Harrogate Iodised throat tablets, to permanganate of potash……pills by the bucketful!
Photo © Lois Blackburn 2008, for more please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthur-and-martha/
No comments:
Post a Comment