Despair turned to hope for Andrea Hayes with pain-control programme

Ireland’s ‘Animal A&E’ TV show presenter, Andrea Hayes, has lived with chronic back pain for years, but despair gave way to hope after she devised her own pain-control programme.

WHEN I was young, I was fascinated by the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale about the emperor who pays a lot of money for new magic clothes, which can only be seen by ‘wise’ people. All the townspeople praise the magnificent clothes, but it takes a young boy to point out that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes at all.

That story proves that ‘seeing isn’t always believing’. I have an ‘invisible illness’. You will not always see my pain, but it’s very real to me.