Way back in 1972, I took a year out of my new plastering business to amuse myself working for the then Berkshire County Council in a road gang with my older brother that promised good earnings for hard work and maximum bonuses. The call of the £££ was stronger than my call to build a serious small business back then.
The work was hard but it was a lot of fun and a proper bodybuilder as he was laying four foot by eighteen concrete pipes, laying kirb, asphalting, digging trenches by hand, all the good character building stuff and a lot of jokes to be had all day.
On one job we were straightening Hollow Lane in Shinfield, Berks and I were designated as layer bosses (granite blocks set at a 60% angle like a kirb). The weather was ‘cool’ let’s say, but since I loved hard work, I only wore a t-shirt to avoid getting too hot and bothering myself. Of course, the old folks would tell me “You’re going to get a chill down your back, then you’ll be sorry”, but like all 20-somethings, I wasn’t about to pay attention at all… Oops!
I came home one night, I sat on the chair while my wife prepared dinner, I went to get up, but I couldn’t, I begged the lady to take my hand to get me out of the chair and she stayed there. her laughing hysterically, she thought she was kidding and it took me a while to convince myself she wasn’t.
That’s where the story begins. A week off work without pay and a slow and steady return to form as he returned to work fairly calmly. Another month or so and I dropped the advice and went back to casting as it seemed like the most ‘sensible’ option, and for a few years, it was.
I started to work more and more on the site and things were going very well for me, both physically and financially. I hired additional plasterers and workers and really started to throw myself into the job like it was going out of style, and THEN! – Yeah, they hit me again with the old threat – Back pain.
I went to the doctor and he said I really needed to rest but he gave me some ‘Wonder capsules’ called Rhumox. It was absolutely amazing! He gave me the feeling that my back was made of “sipping rubber” and the pain simply dissolved leaving me able to get back to work again at full speed. I had been taking these capsules for a couple of months when my prescription was suddenly stopped and my doctor said it was withdrawn due to neurological consequences.
Now ‘luckily’ after I stopped taking them my back felt fine so I was probably taking them out of habit and not necessity because they made my back feel so comfortable. Regardless, it was “business as usual” – getting as much work done as possible in one day, every day as the work gathered momentum and “had” to be done.
In the mid-1980s, I regularly had to take time off work because my bad old back was rearing its ugly head. Each time it seemed to be worse than the previous episode until I had to slow down and just do ‘private’ work – extensions, renovations, etc., which I could back off for a few days without causing ‘too much’ discomfort for everyone. interested.
December 1987 came, although it hit me really hard, I thought I had a stroke, even a brain tumor or something. I was working on a renovation at Shiplake House, Shiplake, Oxon when I had no back problems as such, but lost all my coordination and was partially paralyzed on one side of my head and torso. I got to the doctor, who immediately got in touch with a neuroconsultant who asked me to do some intrusive tests, lumbar puncture, brain scan, full body scan, blood work, etc. It was not a happy moment.
In February 1988 I heard the results: I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the doctor said that the full body scan showed irreparable damage to my lower spine and that he thought the nerve damage had started there. I was in shock and stopped working for a while, but went back to work gently as we couldn’t live off the meager benefits of the day. Interest rates had skyrocketed to 18% on our mortgage and if I was self-employed, I got next to nothing. I’m not complaining here, I’m just saying WHY I needed to get back to work.
Late 1988 and I went back to work very smoothly at first but seemed to get some kind of remission and was soon pushing the limits to make as much money as I could. It was a no-win situation because the more money I earned, the longer I had to take off work due to back spasm caused by MS. At one point I was inactive for a couple of months, hospitalized for five days as my back went into ‘super spasm’. I really thought I was dying, the pain really made me SCREAM! and I had ‘never’ screamed before in my life.
After I got out of the hospital and went back to a softer job, I worked a week, had a few days off, worked a few days, had other days off, and so on until April 9, 2007 (Yes! I remember that date) when the old MS hit me like a bolt out of the blue. I was homebound for a few months and really disabled for several years afterward. In 2019 I started to be more mobile and even thought about going back to doing small plastering jobs to earn a little more than my measly pension. THEN I went to lift a piece of wood, not very heavy, out of my reach, and BAM! That old backache showed me that he wasn’t done with me YET…
The moral of the story?… No matter how old or young you are, please watch your back, as it stays with you for life once you damage it.