Summary
Our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement member, Kathy, spoke to the Alleviate research team about her experience of living with nerve type pain following complex surgery due to vaginal cancer. Watch the latest episode in our ‘Pain Awareness Month’ series.
Kathy is part of Alleviate’s Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) team and in this episode, she describes how following a cancer diagnosis, she went on to have complex surgery which has left her experiencing nerve type pain. Kathy further shares that due to the cancer spreading, she had lymph nodes removed in her groin and now suffers with lymphedema as a result.
Kathy explains how her daily activities are dependent on the amount of pain she is experiencing, and whether she is having a “good or bad day” before covering the tools she uses to manage her pain.
“I live with unpredictable, fluctuating pain”
pain awareness month – kathy morse
September is also Gynae Cancer Awareness Month and Kathy is an advocate of raising awareness of this cause due to her personal experience of living with the long-term pain from vaginal cancer surgery and treatment.
Kathy believes that there needs to be as much research into pain as possible and that there is a lot that can be learned by people living with pain.
The Alleviate Pain Data Hub is a £2M collaborative project funded by a consortium of funders including Versus Arthritis and the UK Medical Research Council. The project is led by the University of Dundee and involves partners from across the UK. Alleviate is one of nine HDR UK Health Data Research Hubs.
More information is available on the Alleviate Pain Data Hub website, subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates or join our community. Follow us at @alleviate_data