I try, on a day to day basis, to get some exercise and weve got a new scheme in this area called Terms, it’s a combination thing between Primary Healthcare and Leisure Services, and the physio at the neurological hospital asked my GP to refer me for this and I actually got referred for… they decided the best thing for me was Aquafit and I had to agree to do two sessions a week for 10 weeks.

I’ve just completed it and it has helped in that it strengthened my muscles and I had my assessment this morning, as a matter of fact, and my cardio vascular performance has doubled, so that’s good. Hasn’t done anything for the pain, but when you’re in water, it’s not so bad, so swimming is a really, really good thing to do.
So it does help the pain when you’re in the water?

It helps the pain, yes. Being in warmish water, being in any water. I mean, in Spain I would swim, I’ve been in Christmas day in the sea. Just being in water seems to have the affect of dulling the pain. But, then it’s a funny pain, it’s not the same as other pains.

Has your pain affected your life with your grandchildren?

They’re pretty good really. Granny goes up the stairs on all fours and comes down on her bottom. At one stage, [Grandson] round the corner he was lovely, when he was about five or six, hed say ‘How’s your back today?’ and hed rush and get a cushion and put it behind my back. He was really sweet. It does frustrate me that I can’t play with them as I would like to.

But they don’t, they seem to accept it, children are very accepting about all this. I get sort of fed up because I can’t get down on the fl, it takes me so long to get down on the floor through lack of mobility as well as pain and I can’t go on long walks with them and things like that.

I’ve got the scooter now and hes already had a go on it. So, you know, places that they go that I haven’t been able to go before, I can go now, because I’ve got the scooter. Young children seem to be very forgiving. None of them have ever said ‘Well, what you doing that for?’ or ‘What’s the matter with you?. They just know that I’ve got something wrong with me that means I can’t do certain things and that’s it.