I come from a family of 6, it’s made up of my Mum & Dad as well as my siblings, one brother and two sisters. Almost every memory I have of my childhood is a happy one, like every family we’ve been through our fair share of heartache and problems but our family unit has never wavered. My parents raised us to always be there for each other no matter what and that’s stuck with us.
When I was in primary school I started complaining of pain in my hip, always the left side. Being young I always said I have pain in my leg, I didn’t understand it was my hip I just felt this pain and I did not like it. This was the start of our journey, from this time when I was five years old my parents started taking me to the GP, hospital appts and anything in between. In the initial years the pain was always put down to ‘growing pains’ and not much investigation was carried out. This didn’t deter my Mum, she was relentless to get to the bottom of this pain I had, continually. After about a year and many, many trips to see our GP I finally got moved under the care of an Orthopaedic Consultant.
As soon as the test started my Parents were given the news I had Perthes Disease. This wasn’t a shock to my Mum & Dad because my Dad also suffered from Perthes disease as a child and was in hospital for 15 months. Back then the treatment options were pretty limited to bed rest on traction and by the time I got the diagnoses things hadn’t progressed much and so I started the hospital stats on traction for weeks/months at a time. It’s only now that I’m older I really understand how difficult that must have been for my parents, they both had jobs, they needed to take care of my Brother and Sister at home, get them to school and then still find time to come and see me in hospital every single day.
My memories of that Children’s ward are on the whole pretty positive, as a child they do everything to make you happy and keep your mind active with school work whilst being attached to my bed. This went on for a few years and then my pain calmed and I had many years of remission. My parents were always cautious and there were many things I wouldn’t do out of fear but on the whole my life after that few years was as normal as I’d hoped it could be.
In 2008 when my symptoms started again, it was only then that I was able to understand the lasting effect that period had on my parents. Every time I had an appointment or said I was in pain I’d see my Mums face grimace, for all those years she carried a lot of guilt as she felt there was more she could have done, which is so far from the truth. My Mum done everything in her power to get me the best care and it worked, I had all those years where I felt good. My Dad, he always says he feels guilty for ‘giving this to me’, not much we can do about genes, this is no ones fault.
Now that I’m older I feel deep gratitude for my Mum, Dad & siblings. We all know how difficult it is when one of your family is in hospital, it’s what your day revolves around and they went through that for months/years. I took up a lot of their attention and my Brother and Sister never moaned and just got on with it, even making sure I still got a Tamagotchi cyber pet to keep me company in hospital.
This is how my story of a life with chronic pain began and to this day at 34 years old, it still impacts my family and my own family with Ryan, but I’ll get to that soon enough.
Thanks for reading!
Joanne x
#stayhopeful
Chronically Hopeful 