Woman with ‘incurable’ chronic pain and man in wheelchair see life-changing disabilities eased in ‘Big Little Fix’

Theresa O’Rourke, who lives alone, suffered a herniated disc in 1975 while working as a childminder after she attempted to lift a child.

Despite having straightforward surgery to remove the disc, she was left with chronic pain and diagnosed with arachnoiditis, which is an incurable and untreatable fusing of the spinal cord nerves.

“Pain has been with me now for nearly 50 years. It becomes a part of you and is ever-present. It is like getting out of bed every day and someone puts a hot coal on you in your insides,” she said.

She said she has tried all types of medication including ketamine, oxycontin and even methadone, and one day she woke up after knocking herself out from painkillers.

“I didn’t know where I was. In the end the pain broke through that. You can’t even imagine it,” she told inventor and designer Trevor Vaugh, on RTÉ’s show Big Little Fix.

As well as a slight visual impairment whereby she can’t read too close to her face, Theresa told Mr Vaugh that she was unable to hold up a book due to her chronic pain. “If I didn’t have that, I would read every day,” she said.

Her one request for Mr Vaugh and his team of engineers, designers and programmers as part of the show that tackles life-changing disabilities, is to be able to read to help her forget her chronic pain.

“When you are engrossed in the books, you forget about the pain. It is there physically, but it helps get your mind over it,” she said on episode two, due to air on RTÉ on Wednesday evening.

The show sees a special prototype chair developed which allows Ms O’Rourke to read hands-free either with a paperback book or on an iPad. She described it as “more than perfect.”

Mr Vaugh and his team also look to address her chronic pain through “distraction therapy” by using a Virtual Reality (VR) headset, which they hope to “reduce her perception of the pain.”

The episode also sees Little Big Fix Inventor Lorna Ross visit David Tarpey in Oranmore who is paralysed from the chest down and uses a wheelchair, following a farming accident involving a tractor 20 years ago.

Mr Tarpey, who works in agricultural consultancy, lives with his wife Lucille and daughter Maria, who brings him out sea swimming or to the pool every day to get his exercise.

While there is a mechanical seat and lift to lower him into the pool, he prefers the lack of people bumping into him and the “boundlessness” of being able to swim in the ocean.

Despite driving to the sea himself, his daughter Maria must wade out with his wheelchair to allow him into the water and also pull him back in. They described his chair as “not fit for purpose” for this.

In the episode, he said the act of swimming in the sea is “therapeutic” and asked designers to develop a way for him to get in and out independently, without Maria, who is working and studying.

Ms Ross and her team of engineers and designers get to work, however on reflection, they decided that designing a wheelchair where David could go out on his own in the sea would be “dangerous.”

Both David and his daughter Maria were unimpressed with Ms Ross’ original prototype which would require, not one but four people to lift him in and out of the sea.,

However, pushing back, the inventor listened to their issues but decided that it would be safer for David to be accompanied by people and so enlisted the help of a local Galway sea swimming community.

Following months of design, the team finally unveiled David’s new “fit for purpose” wheelchair.

How will David and Ms O’Rourke react to their new chairs, both looking to address now decades long life-changing disabilities?

Big Life Fix airs Wednesdays at 21:35 on RTÉ One & RTÉ Player.