Dydd dewi sant hapus i chi/ Happy St. Davids' day to you! 

Today we are looking at the story of one brave Welsh Member, who struggled with pain for more than 30 years. Like many Blesma Members, Steve Fisher has had to endure more than his fair share of pain. This is his story, told to us in 2018 as part of Blesma's WWI Commemorative Magazine...

The Swansea man joined the Welsh Guards as a Junior Leader in 1971, when he was just 15 years old. He served two tours of Northern Ireland before he was severely injured in the Falkland Islands in 1982.

“My injury occurred just after the Argentinians had surrendered, while I was standing on Port Stanley runway,” he says. “An RAF Harrier Jump Jet accidentally discharged both its Sidewinder missiles. Thankfully, they weren’t armed, but they broke into pieces and hit 11 of us below the waist. My right leg was hanging off below the knee, my left femur was broken in two, and the side of my left foot, including a toe, was blown away. I joined the Army with 10 toes and left with four!”

As horrific as the incident was, this was only the start of Steve’s woes. “I was medically downgraded, and so I took a job as an Army Recruiting Sergeant in Swansea,” he says.

“But my right leg got worse and worse. I still had both legs but couldn’t get around without horrendous pain, so I decided to have my right leg amputated below the knee 11 years after the initial injury.”

Steve was discharged from the Army and went ahead with the amputation, but due to nerve complications, it made matters worse. “For the next 16 years, I lived in pure pain hell,” says Steve.

Until recently, I hardly ever slept due to severe Phantom Limb Pain. It felt like severe shots of electricity or as if somebody was stabbing me in my stump with an ice pick!"

“I was in a wheelchair, on huge amounts of painkillers and medication – including morphine – but nothing helped with the pain. I was severely depressed and became suicidal.

“When I put my prosthetic on the pain was unbelievable, but the specialists wouldn’t listen to me when I told them it felt like a raw nerve pain. In the end, I turned to alcohol to kill the pain. I used to drive past cemeteries, jealous of the bodies in the graves. I would think; ‘I can’t wait to get there, so I’m not in any more pain!’ ”

Eventually, a pain specialist diagnosed a neuroma. “The raw nerves in my stump had grown and fragmented, and had attached to scar tissue,” he says. “I had basically been suffering from raw nerves for 16 years!”

The answer, said doctors, was to push a long needle into Steve’s stump to inject the nerves and kill them. This, however, meant yet more pain. “They did this twice, and although I did get some pain relief each time, it came back,” says Steve. “The needle going in and out was pure torture, and I said I’d rather kill myself than go through it again.”

Five years ago, Steve’s stump was cut open and the offending nerve buried in the bone to stop any regrowth. This, finally, was a success.

“Until recently, I hardly ever slept due to severe Phantom Limb Pain. It felt like severe shots of electricity or as if somebody was stabbing me in my stump with an ice pick! There was no controlling it. I have suffered with pain since the age of 26, and I’m 62 now. And due to the huge loss of blood and oxygen when I was hit, I can’t even remember getting married, my kids growing up, or most of my life before the injury. That makes me very sad!”

Steve has, thankfully, managed to curb the cocktail of drugs he was taking in his quest to control the pain, and only takes Co-codamol now to dampen his stump pain so he can sleep. After enduring so much, Steve feels that Blesma is the one place where he can find people to whom he can relate.

He plays an active role in the Association, and was the Honorary Secretary and Welfare Officer for the Swansea Branch before it closed. “Blesma has been a big part of my life since 1996, it is like a family for me,” he says. “It’s the one group of people who can understand something of what I’ve been through – and what I’m still going through! That means a lot."