Living Your Best Life with Pain

In this episode we hear from Gary Smith on his experience living with chronic pain. Gary shares how pain effects his everyday life and how he copes. He also shares how his passion for his animals helps him deal with the pain and live his life.

Interested in the topic and looking for more?

You can also find more information on chronic pain in general at Health Direct.

The Wimmera Southern Mallee Integrated Pain Service helps those with chronic pain. The service provides tailored treatments to be able to live with and recover from chronic pain. You can hear more about the service in our ‘Understanding Chronic Pain’ episode.

Gary mentioned that people had suggested that exercising may help with his pain. He did not feel it helped him, but it may help you if you suffer from chronic pain. For more information on this check out Exercise Right.

You can also check out the Pain Revolution. It has lots of information and programs for people in rural areas with chronic pain.

You can also find other fact sheets and information on pain management here.

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Facebook: @FarmerWantsaHealthyLife Twitter: @_FWAHL

Facebook: @FarmerWantsaHealthyLife Twitter: @_FWAHL

This is a West Wimmera Health Service podcast. Presented by me Brigitte Muir.

This series focuses around stories and issues related to health and wellbeing. Some of the people we hear from are sharing their stories, hoping that their experiences will help us with our own health and wellbeing. Please be aware that some of their life experiences may touch on issues that are sensitive to some. Please listen with care. You will find information on seeking help if you need it in the notes attached to each episode.

Gary Smith has a passion for horses and other animals. He is also someone who has been living with intense chronic pain for the last 15 years. I met up with Gary at his Wail property near Dimboola.

Born in Horsham, dad was a shearer, I went to Horsham tech school to qualify as a wool classer… I’ve done one clip and a day, I think, two days after I left school, I was asked to… go and work in a big stable in Melbourne… that was, I worked for [unintelligible]. They had… the year before they just won with Bold David at the Inter Dominion, which is our major race in the southern hemisphere. They have a trotters and pacers Division, and he won the pacers division.

A year later, Gary found himself on a plane taking a lot of horses to America and then New Orleans. It was not long before he was recognised as an outstanding groom trusted with champions.

The good grooms got the good horses… and it proves then they named good horses, good grooms, good horses, good grooms, I think, ‘Oh, that's right. Yeah’. What did they think about me then? because one of the horses I had won the New Zealand Cup.

Okay, so lots of horses in your early life.

Yeah. So then I come back home from America.

How…How long till you left?

A week short of 12 months.

When we arrived back home. When I come back….I thought people here are not real good at paying up with horses, you know, you can shot ‘em, you can do this, you can do that and whatever. I still collect me horses…I was training my own horses and that's it. So… I went and looked in the paper and the Horsham Mail Times. There were three jobs going at the hospital… general nurse… state enrolled nurse, morgue attendant and I thought ‘Oh I don’t think I’ve got the brains to be any of those, so I may as well be a morgue attendant’. So… anyway, when I was there for the interviews, matron at the time there she said ‘look, we'll put you in for general nursing’. She said ‘there's an orderly job, to start work straightaway’. So I take it. So I did the orderly job for about a month… anyway, one of the girls from theatre was down there, and they said to me, ‘Oh, you're new here’. And I said, ‘Yeah, I'm new. Yeah’. She said ‘look, our technician up there is going to leave soon. You want to come up and take his place’ and I’d been down there for about a month or two….and I said, ‘Yeah I wouldn't mind that. I don't mind looking at operations’. So… 20 something odd years later, I'm still working in theatre.

How did you end up living with chronic pain?

Many years ago, when I was a little one. I had croup… and in those days, you got a sulphur tablet which brought the temperature down….and… one night there mom had gone out milking, my older brother…he happened to stop inside because I got a chair, got up on the mantlepiece, walked on the mantlepiece, sat on the other end and I was into the tablets out of the bottle… just throwing them down. He comes in, he says ‘I'm going to tell my mum on you’. Anyway, come back in. Mom said ‘How many did you have?’ ‘Oh about a handful?’ Anyway, she says to my brother ‘run up - the end of the road. Go and get Bill, get him down with the car and we’ll take you straight to hospital’. So took me up….and when they gave me the chloroform… there was a couple of nurses held me down… and one of them put the top thing over, over me face they poured it on. I fought and fought and fought. Now when I'm coming out of an anaesthetic, I fight.

15 years ago Gary busted his knee and had an operation making sure to mention to those looking after him that they were to give him plenty of space when he came out of the anaesthetic. He knew from experience that he would be thrashing around.

Afterwards, like the next day, I actually felt the best I've ever felt for years. I drove back home…. and for four months, I couldn't walk. I could barely…. Shuffle…. that much.

Add to that shingles playing up and you have a prime candidate for pain medication. Pain did not disappear. But it did not stop Gary from working in operating theatres in Horsham, then in Melbourne hospitals. Now retired from his medical career, Gary lives on the land just outside Dimboola, in the company of his beloved horses, and he is an outstanding breeder of goats and poultry.

Right…living with pain. The hardest part with me is getting my tablets.

Tell me more about the pain that this is supposed to control. Please?

Enough pain that I can go to sleep. I have tablets that make me go to sleep. So…

What is the pain caused by? From that accident?

From that accident.

In the hospital

I then ended up going to Melbourne… put myself into the Alfred Hospital… pain clinic down there. I used to go down there…every month to see the pain clinic and… the charge lady in the pain clinic there. She said to me, ‘are you doing enough exercise?’ and I said ‘I can't exercise because, I said, it’s too painful’. Now she said the three things, one, now you can have an operation and good chance it will fail and you'll be…

An operation for what?

On me back.

Right

How could… it could fail, which many of them do and you won't be able to be… you'll be bedridden for the rest of your life. Two, we can put you on lots of exercises and whatever you've done that, and that's done no good. Three medications. And she said ‘that's what I can help you with’.

So you have been on… painkillers, heavy painkillers for the last 15 years.

Yep

Is that right?

Yep

And you live here, near Dimboola in Wail on the property with lots of animals. So, the medication is helping you with being able to move around.

I've got two hours. When I take me medication, I got two hours to get out, and then I come in… and then… I don't have… I have another five-milligram quick acting about lunchtime… and then I take the other medications before I go to go out and feed up and everything…and my other medications at night.

Now would you say… that you… have to be a pretty strong person to… be able to function mentally with the amount of pain and medication you're dealing with.

Cause I'm an animal person.

Yeah

And I talk to so many people on Facebook, all over the world about horses… what to do for horses, how you should manage this one, that one whatever. Now, I think, if I'm doing something good, like my horses here, I've got one mare… that's within three generations, she's got three cross at the Kentucky Derby in her, which I saw when I was in America, and the big mare down the back, she's got three crosses. All the rest of them got two crosses. And when I mate one with another mare, there'll be five crosses.

So basically your pain medication is helping you live the life you want to live.

Yeah, yeah.

Even though… it's addictive, isn't it?

Oh yeah. Oh look, I know it is. When I go to my doctor, I usually go there about… four days before… I actually need more, I'm gonna run out in four days. Okay, they go to you ‘no, no, no, you got to come back… it's too much time beforehand’. And I said ‘no, the thing is, okay, you say no today for me to ring you in two days because it's the fourth day. I've got to go and have me tablets. Then when you send the scripts the next day to Dimboola. They can't get some tablets in till the next day, which is the last day which I’ve usually ran out the morning tablets, and I've got to try and with everything… to drive in and go walk down in front of the shop. And I'm… I know I'm shifty when I'm walking. People are gonna say ‘oh, he's on drugs’. Yes, I am. But if I had them, I'm as straight as a line, just like any other drug person. But I've got mine for… a definite reason, whereas they use it for… recreation.’

Gary sure gets out there and live his life. I caught up with him at the Natimuk show where he was helping with the horse events. I know that right now you're in pain, but you are here. Does your passion help you, with dealing with the pain?

Everything…all me animals at home, still got some horses and… my dairy goats. And of course they are all coming in season now. So… that'll take… a bit of shuffling around, and I still breed some of me poultry. I've been the president of the Victorian Plymouth Rock Club now for over 30 years, so it's, it's good.

That was Gary Smith small whole breeder at Wail.

Please remember that if you live in the area, you can now access the Wimmera and Southern Mallee Integrated Pain Service. Contact numbers and information relevant to chronic pain management are in the notes attached to this episode. And while you're at it, please give us a star rating. We'd also love to hear your comments and suggestions. Our Facebook and Twitter details are in the notes. Until next have a healthy life won’t you?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai edited by WWHS Health Promotion Team.

Farmer Wants a Healthy Life

Living Your Best Life with Pain

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