Ancient Egypt

How nice it was to see some Egyptian sunshine on a cold day in February in South Wales. Lillian Bath gave us a lively account of her, and her husband's travels in Egypt. Those bronze age people certainly achieved some incredible feats of engineering using only copper tools. They must have been very inventive to have solved all the problems they must have encountered when carving, tunneling and building. Nowadays we just pick up the phone and call a "man who can !"

ABSEIL AT DINAS ROCK - EASTER SUNDAY 4TH APRIL

Why not join us for an exciting experience this Easter and support a great charity at the same time. If you can't, you can always donate using our justgiving page.

NEW ! - portable concentrators from Air Products.

Lynne Sandhu from Air Products, and Hannah Howard, the nurse who does our oxygen assessments, came to our meeting on 15th January, to demonstrate the portable concentrators which are to be made available to us. These will make it easier for people needing oxygen for 15 hours a day to get away on holidays - no more arranging in advance to have equipment delivered to a holiday address.
These devices are pushed, or pulled on wheels,thus limiting the type of ground they can be taken on - no strolls on a beach or a river bank, they require a flat surface. If any of us are issued with one of these we will have to hand back any portable cylinders or liquid oxygen we have now.
So, these will increase flexibilty but will limit mobility. What a shame that Air Products have decided to supply two different portable concentrators, the Inogen One and the SeQual Eclipse, which will do the same job, instead of extending the choices to us by offering the smaller, and easily portable, Airsep Freestyle.
We were told that you can't suit everybody, but if we had been offered a choice of the larger model to suit the LTOT patients and the lighter weight portable to suit those patients needing ambulatory only, We think the needs of more people would have been met.

The Catwg Bellringers

The ladies of the Catwg Bellringers entertained us well at our Christmas meeting. We ate mince pies and sang carols, all very relaxed until they said "Right, your turn now," and handed the bells over to us. Shock, horror and much laughter. Well, we proceeded to do bellringing by numbers, and actually managed to produce some recogniseable tunes, and a bit of harmony, I am proud to say, once we had a bit of practice. Adrian Bailey and Kevin Sullivan, from British Lung Foundation Wales, joined us - thanks to Kevin for the photos, and the Catwg Bellringers for fun event.

An award to be proud of

Emrys Evans, Chairman of British Lung Foundation Wales, came to our December meeting to present the group with a certificate for Excellence in Fundraising. He joined us for tea, mince pies and a chat and talked to us about the importance of fundraising to enable British Lung Foundation Wales to expand it's work to make life easier for all people in Wales who are living with lung disease. Funds were raised throughout the year in various ways. We held our annual abseil event in April, which raised £5,000. We were left bequests and concerts were held in Port Talbot to raise money for the group. We also had a donation from the Inner Wheel group in Neath. Awareness Days, collecting tins and sales of craftwork all contribute to the cause.

Christmas Dinner

We all met at lunchtime last Wednesday, at the Dyffryn Arms, Bryncoch, for a lovely Christmas lunch. It was great to all be together for a purely social occasion - not that our monthly meetings aren't social events as well as covering some of the more serious aspects. It was the first of our festive events, the next being the Catwg bell ringers, with mince pies and wine.

Legal Details

At our last Breathe Easy meeting on Friday, Janelle and Andrew, from a local legal partnership, talked to us about the many complexities of Living Wills, Power of Attorney and the ever vexing question of who pays for long term care, if and when it is needed. There was an awful lot to take in, all in one go, but if the exchequer is not to gain by getting all your wordly goods, it's something we all have to think about, sooner rather than later.