I’d do anything to relieve my agonising pain
I know most people won’t understand why Hannah Moore has chosen to have a leg amputated (Mail) to help relieve her chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS).
But those of us who live with constant, intractable pain will understand the lengths that one will go to for any relief.
I’ve lived with chronic pain for many years, and have undergone various major back surgeries in an attempt to give me some relief.
My first operation, at the age of 21, followed me taking my nursing finals lying on a mattress. nursing at a time when we still ‘ lifted’ patients, combined with a genetic disorder of the collagen, marked me out for back and joint problems.
After two failed back fusions in more recent years, last year I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted. It gives me some relief when it’s switched on, but it isn’t a cure.
The nerve damage in my back is permanent, as is the genetic condition ( Ehlers - Danlos Syndrome) causing faulty connective tissue to allow recurrent joint dislocations, circulation problems and more.
There is no cure, currently, for my pain. I recall the look of shock on a friend’s face when I said I would happily swap my poor mobility for a permanent wheelchair if it meant I could be pain free. I would imagine that brave young Hannah has come up against similar reactions.
I hope that with more recognition of chronic pain conditions such as CRPS there might be some more understanding for this debilitating, invisible illness.
CLAIRE SAUL, Cheam, Surrey.
Spending spree
IT’S all very well for the elderly to spend, spend, spend, whether it’s their children’s inheritance or not (Mail), but what happens when one of you has a serious illness such as a stroke, as my husband has, and you have to pay for someone to get him up and put him to bed, because you aren’t strong enough to do it for him?
It isn’t cheap, I can assure you. who is going to pick up the tab: your children or the NHS?
The NHS is marvellous, and we are lucky to have it, but don’t think you’ll simply pop off on the 18th green with a quick heart attack: it doesn’t always happen like that. It frightens me to think of the future and how irresponsible people are being.
Mrs B. JOHNS, Brighton, E. Sussex.
Pension poverty
I READ recently that if the state pension had kept up with the cost of living, it would now be worth £400 a week. If this is true, it shows how George osborne used Gordon Brown’s system of ‘fiscal drag’ to ‘steal’ from pensioners.
It’s outrageous that when the price of everything is going up, we’re subjected to enforced poverty. I only hope that in the next Budget, those of us who have been deprived of a decent income will be considered.
My wife’s state pension is only £71 a week. If I hadn’t saved during my working life, we would now be punished for her staying at home to bring up our family and then be a burden on the State.
Thank goodness Mrs May is beginning to put the country first. WILLIAM SIDDINGTON,
Macclesfield, Cheshire.
Back on the ward
I’VE recently received a letter from the nursing & Midwifery Council asking me whether I would consider returning to work.
I’m over 65 and retired 18 months ago after nursing for 45 years.
They’ve offered me a short update course and free re-registration. I hope this is because there are so few nurses left like us who used to do a hands-on, vocational training that someone has realised the NHS needs us elders to come back and show that today’s university way of teaching will produce a healthcare professional, but not a nurse.
I may well offer my long experience in recognising what I believe to be the role of a nurse for free. Mrs TRISH ARUNDEL,
Barnsley, S. Yorks.
Cash-strapped
I REMEMBER receiving my Barclaycard in 1966. It had a top limit of £200, but its main purpose for me was that I could use it as a cash guarantee card to draw money from any Barclays branch.
no one who’s grown up since then has any idea how hard it was to obtain cash if you were away from home. on holiday, say, you would make an arrangement between your own branch and the one nearest to where you were staying.
The previous year, I had gone to the outer Hebrides and, because Barclays had no branches there, the only practical method was to take travellers cheques. That wasn’t the only hurdle. The banks were open only between 10am and 3pm.
Then, in the summer of 1966, I walked into Barclays in Hereford and obtained the cash I needed simply by presenting my Barclaycard and a cheque, which I had made out to ‘cash’. JULIAN FAIRWEATHER, Peterborough, Cambs.
Bench of misery
I’VE just realised why the EASTENDERS are such a miserable lot. They don’t have back gardens.
They have just the communal square with the one bench, which they take turns to sit on, usually when in the throes of some crisis or other. Considering all the trauma every resident goes through daily, it’s a wonder there aren’t large queues forming to use it.
JANET BYRNE, Harrow, Middx.
Stansted trouble
MY WIFE and I were caught up in the shambles at Stansted airport last week (Mail).
what is disturbing is that the Home office is distorting facts in suggesting passengers from Europe passed through border control within 25 minutes. In fact, it took at least twice as long.
The Home office should be issuing an apology and looking at means to correct such situations, rather than attempting to deny that the problem exists. RICHARD INGLIS-REEVES,
Wiveton, Norfolk.
Chinese takeaway
CHINA is provocatively challenging Japan and Taiwan, building islands in the Pacific to extend its territorial influence.
In Africa, China is exerting primacy over African mineral rights. In the Uk, China has bought swathes of our north Sea oil fields and is buying into our gas distribution system and Thames water. It’s also gaining primacy over our nuclear industry, our Government preferring to turn to Chinese expertise rather than fostering our own.
China is building belligerency in the Pacific in time for the new U.S. presidency. Britain is so in hock to the Chinese that we won’t be able to support the U.S.
In the excitement to promote foreign investment, the British have forgotten they are among the most highly taxed in the world.
other nations, many of which don’t impose an income tax, have a huge advantage over the British in buying up the United kingdom, and the huge money inflows by foreigners disenfranchises the British people. The result is that our Government dances to foreign demands, not those of the voter.
The Government needs a process by which would-be foreign investors are financially disadvantaged to an extent that when they purchase Uk assets, it is on a level playing field with the British.
PHILIP HODSON, Newmarket, Suffolk.
The loony Left
on Saturday october 1, I was in a pub in Blackpool when in trooped about 40 strangely dressed people sporting a variety of headgear, top hats, pith helmets — the lot.
Some had painted faces, others eccentric beards. The penny dropped when in walked a small, rotund guy in a white suit and a big Stetson wearing a rosette declaring ‘ Monster Raving Loony Party Conference, Uncle Toms Cabin’.
Looking on, I thought: ‘They’ve as much chance of winning an election as the Labour Party.’
C. CHALKLEY, Wakefield, W. Yorks.