How are you? Good thanks. My name's Hayley and I'm 32. I've had chronic pain for 20 years now.
My name is Leah Dwyer. I'm 57 years old. I have been living with chronic pain for about 14 years and I was dependent on opioids for 8 years.
My name is Gary. I'll be 57 this year. I've been living with chronic pain for around 30 years.
My name is Nadine .I am 30 years old and I've been living with chronic pain for 5 years
My name is Trevor Barker. I've been living with chronic pain for about 40 years
My name's Stephen Rose. I'm a proud Gunditjmara man
I've had chronic pain for 22 years
How did your journey with pain start?
How has pain impacted my life?
How does my culture and beliefs impact my pain?
Do you feel judged or stigmatised because of your pain?
My pain started after an accident at work.
I had severe scoliosis. My spine was twisted.
I've had at least 20 hospital procedures on my back including surgeries.
I fell backwards at a mother's race at my son's school and that was really the beginning of my pain.
So I've had three ACL reconstructions to my right knee which has caused chronic pain through both legs.
It's constant. It's a 24/7 thing.
I'm in pain now yes.
Yes it's a sharp pain it's there all the time. I'll live with 24/7.
Yeah I don't get a break from that pain. It's constantly in both legs.
So I was withdrawing from relationships, withdrawing from groups that I was involved in
I can't work anymore. It affects everything I do, physically, mentally. It's always in my head .
It's a feeling of being lost and hopeless. It's exhausting more than anything really.
I don't think people do understand what it's like to live with pain 24/7, year after year .
for 14 years. It is definitely hard and it can be quite soul destroying and crushing and depressing
and scary and worrying and there's a lot of anger in there too. Why me?
Absolutely I felt stigmatized, especially when I worked at the bank. A lot of older people that oh if you wait till you get to
my age then you'll know what pain is.
There is definitely a big aspect that you live off the system that you just want to stay home especially around using medication too, definitely
Being Aboriginal I've found that I've come across stigma in the community especially at a time when I
my chronic pain was so bad that I was put on a methadone treatment. It's like they were looking
for your arms to see if you had track marks. It's very denigrating it makes you feel very low
Yep, yep I get put on the fat and lazy and I'd love to be working
They're like why is that pain
still going on why hasn't that fixed you've had surgery, you've taken medication ,why isn't it better?
I grew up out of a British culture in terms of how you manage and handle feelings and
emotions and you suppress them you don't outwardly show them and pain intensifies when you don't have good support
I think being Australian we do have that mentality of suck it up she'll be right. pat it on the back.
We don't talk about our pain um we're supposed to just get on with it or
you know the Aussie way of saying 'she'll be right' um and really lots of times she won't be right
Being Aboriginal at times has um affected me wanting to go and seek help
often because there's a stigma with Aboriginals that they they just want the drugs or they're
going to take the drugs and then re-sell them on for something else
I can sort of look back at my ancestors and my elders and see the struggles they went through and realise you know what I'm going
through is nothing compared to what they went through so that you know sort of helps me a bit