Picture from Pain & Able Magazine Number 11 June 2000 (c) Bronllys Pain Management Centre, Powys LD3 0LU
The picture shows people suffering from chronic pain sliding down the outside of St Thomas's Hospital in London, now a 13-storey building. With the help of doctors, nurses and hospital staff, in April 2000 they succeeded in raising over £19,000 for INPUT, the hospital's pain management programme. If you have unintentionally caused injury and pain through a traffic accident or by making or selling a motor vehicle designed to travel at high speeds near places where people walk, cycle or swim, or if you are merely sympathetic towards people who struggle through life with severe persistent pain, you may wish to make a donation to one of the UK's pain management programmes. Many hospitals are lacking in basic facilities such as hydrotherapy pools for those in pain. Excercise in water can stop muscle wastage and spare a road traffic accident victim or elderly person further discomfort. Doctor Richard Russell was one of the first to recognise the benefits of exercise in water, at a time when the popular belief was that it was unhealthy. Click on the picture for a list of worthy Pain Management Programmes in many parts of the UK (but sadly not Brighton!).
After graduating from the University of Leyden (Leiden in the Netherlands), Dr Richard Russell started work as a physician at St Thomas's. Dr Russell, himself, had an interest in pain management, but his patients were those suffering from glandular illnesses, cancer and rheumatism (a disease causing swelling and pain of joints and muscles). Today a large proportion of people with pain, which cannot be adequately treated, are the victims of road accidents resulting in serious orthopaedic and neurological injuries. Brighton badly needs a Pain Management Unit. Perhaps Dr Russell would have campaigned for one if he had lived in the 21st century.
