“I first came to the physiotherapy group at St Clare in September 2018. I had complained to my doctor about pains in my legs, and problems with my legs freezing as I went up the stairs, and they sent me for a test to look at my fitness. The test showed that I had become really unfit, which surprised me because I have always been an active person.”
“I have had heart problems for a number of years and this has led to me having difficulty breathing. I was also diagnosed with leukaemia in February 2018 and the chemotherapy had really not agreed with me and I lost a lot of weight. All this had meant that I had become really inactive and my muscles were no longer strong. That is the thing with muscles, if you don’t use them, you lose them!”
“It was my cardiac nurse who recommended that I come to St Clare and give the physiotherapy group a try.”
“I come to the physiotherapy group at the Hospice once a week and we do a range of exercises in a circuit. I started off doing two minutes of each exercise and you gradually build that up. We do things like lifting weights, doing standing press-ups, and using the exercise bike. You just do what you can at first, you might only start with a half a kilo weight, and someone else might use a two kilo weight, but that doesn’t matter. The class is run by a Physiotherapist and they create an exercise plan that is right for you, and that you can manage.”
“When I first came I could only do 2 minutes of each exercise and that was a struggle, but within a few months I could do all of them for 3 minutes, and now I can steam through them!”
“After the circuits we have a break where we eat a healthy snack like fruit salad, and you have the chance to have a social chat with the other people in the group. We then finish the session with a relaxation exercise like mindfulness or seated yoga.”
“It is not just about your body, it’s about your mind as well. Coming to the group also gets you up and out the house and socialising with other people, which I find is really good for me.”
“When I first came it was a real struggle just to climb the stairs at home. I would be so breathless by the time I got to the top that I couldn’t move. Going to collect the paper from the shop, or going to the supermarket, was a real struggle too. But now I don’t feel like that anymore. It’s as simple as that!”
“I can do so much more now, and it’s just made my life so much better.”
“The other day my wife was showing me how to do the Foxtrot in the kitchen. I couldn’t dance it when I was sixteen, and I still can’t now, but before coming to St Clare we wouldn’t even have dreamed of dancing! I would have said I can’t breathe or my legs hurt. So it has made such a difference to me to come to the physiotherapy group.”
“I would recommend the physio group to everybody. I think it should be the law when you get to a certain age or level of fitness to come to something like this – it is even free of charge to attend!”
“Your fitness is something that you cannot see going, it just creeps up on you. You feel it slipping, but then one day you find the stairs too steep, or they make you out of breath. It is easy to just think, ‘well I am 83 years old now so what do you expect?’ But actually, you shouldn’t expect to just stop being active. It’s about doing the most that you can do, and living the best that you can.”
“I intend to keep coming for as long as I am physically able. It’s not a case of saying, ‘I am fit again now, so I will stop’. You have to keep it up.”
– Brian