More operations
On the 7th of June 1996 my local doctor sent me for a bone scan of my right knee and ankle, the scan showed my ankle had been broken in several different places.
My knee was operated on in mid June.
I returned to see the Orthopaedic surgeon at the start of July and showed him the bone scan of my right ankle, he decided he needed to operate on the ankle. This operation was performed in early August.
Finally I had improvement in my knee & ankle, however my back was not getting better and now that I could walk properly (albeit slowly with a limp) ,my back was getting worse and worse. Standing, walking or sitting for as little as 10 minutes made the pain increase I would get massive cramps in the muscles in my back .
I had spent the entire time since being released from hospital lying on the floor (when I wasn't exercising) because I could not sit in a lounge chair without increasing pain.
I went back to the spinal surgeon in September 1996 with the MRI which showed a disc bulge at L5-S1 which is the lowest vertebrae in the spine, the problem was I felt the pain at L3/L4 which is about 150mm above L5-S1, the doctor said there was nothing that could be done I would just have to “live with it”.

Some relief
While in Adelaide I saw a “massage chair” in the front of Harris Scarfes, I tried it out and it turned out to be a “zero gravity” chair with 10 massage motors which I could purchase for around $600. I bought one and it made life a lot better as I was finally off the floor and the massagers helped relieve some of my back pain.
Despite this life was still very hard, I could not imagine living in severe pain for the rest of my life and still couldn't except that there wasn't some type of operation or treatment which would help. In this entire time I had not been able to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. I had always been a patient person but by now I was a very angry person. My wife was having to take care of me and do all the cooking, washing, cleaning, etc. every day I thought about committing suicide so at least my wife could move on and have some chance of a bright future, but my wife was pregnant .
In November 1996 my wife gave birth to a girl and this did bring great joy to me and another reason to keep up the exercises and try to find a cure.

Depressed but taking a stance
By the end of July 1997 I was very depressed, I believe this was both from my injuries and because of the way I was being treated by the medical profession and the fact that no one seemed to have any idea on how to help relieve my back pain.
My local GP sent me to a pain unit at a major Adelaide hospital in early July where I was diagnosed with “post traumatic stress disorder”, I was amazed by now that in waiting rooms there were no zero gravity chairs, no where to lie down (except the floor) not even a lounge chair for people to wait comfortably in, just standard chairs. After several visits to the pain unit I was not getting any help, the head of the unit was a lady who had baseball caps with “no brain no pain” written on them, I understand the principal and I had been using “distraction techniques” to make time pass and help me deal with the pain for a long time, but this lady was so ignorant she believed if I simply didn't think about my back pain, the pain would just disappear and I’d be fine from then on. Don’t get me wrong I understand a small percentage of people no doubt go into depression which causes them to concentrate purely on their pain there bye making it seem worse, but this was definitely not the case for me or any of the other patients I had met in my opinion.
I also had a “lucky escape” the same lady suggested I should be “committed”, I discovered later this would have meant me being put in hospital and forced to sit for hours at a time every day until I stopped saying it increased my pain. I believe that would have been torture and my deepest sympathy goes to anyone who has been put through this.
By this time I was disgusted that doctors and hospital waiting areas only had standard chairs in their waiting areas, no provisions for people with back pain as in lounge chairs or preferably “zero gravity” chairs even at places like the pain clinic which would see mostly people who suffered from back pain. So I started protesting by lying down on the floor in waiting areas. I really had no choice particularly on the trips to Adelaide as by the time I had sat through the flight from Pt Lincoln I was in immense pain and had no interest in making it even worse with more sitting.