Gill Kentell - Gardening Is My Passion

Gill Kentell worked as a secretary until she was 40 before turning her passion for gardening into a job.

For 17 years she's been picking up work thanks to her green fingers, however, all those hours with secateurs have taken a toll on her hands. She now suffers from joint pain in her fingers and thumbs and, to make things worse, has also suffered injuries to both her knees which make bending down and kneeling quite hard.

Eager to find a non-invasive solution to her pain, she took part in the Flexiseq Experience Study earlier this year. She now says she'd definitely recommend Flexiseq to her friends.

Here's Gill's story.

Gardening is my passion, my hobby and my job and I do lots of it to raise money for charity too. But it's also been at the heart of a lot of my joint pain problems.

I picked up a trigger thumb injury from all the cutting with secateurs and I’ve been told I should have an operation. I’m very hands-on. I like DIY and carpentry - I make compost bins - so I can’t afford to have my hands out of action. I’d need six months to recover from an operation and that’s too much with my busy life. With pain in my hands, I also struggle with my grip. I can usually only pick up a couple of pots at a time with my left hand and even then I have to hold them from the bottom.

I've also got bad knees, which isn't particularly useful when you need to kneel a lot of the time. Three years ago, I tore the meniscus in my left knee after a fall at Munich airport on the way to a river cruise for my 60th birthday. And then I injured the other knee playing badminton last year. I changed direction and it just went from under me. As a result, I tend to do a lot of my gardening, like potting, at standing height.

I’m not one to take pain-killers unless I absolutely need to. I also find swallowing tablets a bit of a problem. When I was using Flexiseq on my hands and knees during the Study, I had no pain at night and I had no pain in the morning. Particularly in my hands. I started to notice it working maybe four, five days into the Study.

My problems are quite serious, so it's not going to solve everything, but it certainly helps with the pain. I actually slept better because my hands weren't as painful in bed. The other night I went out with friends to a social for a bit of dancing and it was the first time where I didn’t have a knee problem. People even commented on it. I’ve been using Flexiseq on it, so that could well be what helped.

I’ve mentioned to my friends that I was in the Study. If any of them mention they have arthritis or joint pain I would definitely recommend Flexiseq. There are no concerns there. I thought it was good.

Further Reading

Tips For Gardening When You Have Arthritis

George Watson - Get On With Living Your Life