Throughout her life Pat Smith has always been very active. An athlete and a hockey player at school she spent most of her career in desk jobs. But as Pat approached 71, she started to experience joint pain that was preventing her from living the life she wanted to.
This is Pat’s story.
I’ve always enjoyed being active. When I was in high school I was playing county level netball and hockey as well as competing in athletic events. After that I ended up playing darts for 25 years.
As I got older I began to realise that going up and down stairs was becoming quite painful. I’ve got three dogs and I wasn’t able to walk them as far as I wanted to. I’d have to stop along my route and have a sit down for a bit of a break. Then when I got home my knees would be really painful and throbbing. I’ve got four grandchildren that I’ve spent time looking after, and it can be tough keeping up with kids when you have bad knees. Not helped, of course, by the fact that children do love to run off.
The pain in my knees got worse and worse. I never needed to check the weather forecast each morning – I could tell you whether it was going to rain depending on the pain in my knees. The thing with pain that isn’t spoken about enough is it changes who you are. You can no longer do the things you want to do, the things that make you feel like yourself. So you sit around and it only makes it worse.
Eventually, in my 50s, I went to the doctor who referred me for a scan. I took my mum with me to the scan and the consultant said, well I won’t repeat the language he used, but he shocked my mum with how he said it. It essentially boiled down to the fact my knees were in serious trouble and I had next to no cartilage left in them. I was told that the only real cure was to have joint replacement surgery.
I felt I was too young to go through that so started to look at other options. Part of the problem is I am highly allergic to ibuprofen. I cannot even use ibuprofen gels. A friend of mine is a pharmacist and I mentioned to him that I was having serious issues with my knee. He told me that his aunt was using this stuff called FlexiSEQ and she swears by it.
“Because I cannot take anything with ibuprofen, finding FlexiSEQ was amazing; suddenly there was something that I could not only use without worry, but that also did what I needed it to.”
Pat Smith
Then I found out it was drug-free and I didn’t think twice – I went straight out and bought some. It took a while to get working but that was in part because for the first month I was only applying it once a day. Then I read the instructions again, realised I needed to do it twice a day and I started to see the benefits.
Now I don’t know how it works when it’s drug-free, but I’ll tell you this: it does work, and it works really well. Because I cannot take anything with ibuprofen, finding FlexiSEQ was amazing; suddenly there was something that I could not only use without worry, but that also did what I needed it to.
Now I can go up and down stairs without even thinking about it. I can walk the dogs and when I get home I’m pain free. I tell anyone who will listen about FlexiSEQ. I’ve recommended it to friends and I tell them to read the leaflet and apply as instructed because it will make all the difference. I feel like I’ve got my life back thanks to FlexiSEQ.