A year of concerns

Last year staffing concerns caused us a few worries. Our physiotherapist left , quickly followed by our oxygen nurse. Soon after that another nurse was absent on long term sickness then, just before Christmas, another nurse was on compassionate leave. What had been a busy team of five was reduced to just one. Respiratory nursing is so specialised, they can't fill these gaps easily. Back-up was pulled in from around the locality, with various people filling the gaps to keep the service going. Our respiratory team has run a good program of home care, pulmonary rehab, hospital clinics etc. over many years, and has continued to do so over the last few months by carefully prioritising needs and careful management of available staff.
Chris Burrows our lead respiratory nurse, and Fiona Reynolds, Head of Nursing in ABMUHB (Abertawe Bro Morganwg University Health Board) came to our Breathe Easy meeting on Friday, to talk through all these issues with us. We had all been worried that we couldn't see how only one or two people could do the work of five with widely differing skills. Happily now a new physiotherapist has begun work, someone has taken over oxygen assessment and another nurse has returned to her post, so things are not quite so frantic.
Let's hope for a calmer year ahead.

Our 9th abseil event - 2015

We couldn't have asked for a better day. After the recent wet, cold and windy weather, we woke up to warm sunshine on Sunday morning. Here are two of our stewards getting ready to help people get their abseiling kit on, man the car park, calm nerves and do other duties that stewards do.

Twenty four adults and three children took part. Half of them have already collected their sponsor money, totalling £2,570 so far - what will the final figure be ? Who knows, only time will tell.

 

Here, a team of family and friends are kitted up and ready to go. Are they viewing the rock with anticipation or anxiety - a bit of both I suppose.

The three children all have big grins, so they found it good fun on the day.

 

Over the years we have raised just over £40,000 for British Lung Foundation to help them in their vital work in combatting lung disease and the causes of lung disease.

 

 

Here we have a group of fundraisers ready for their big adventure.

 Dave, the expert from call of the Wild, gives the first group their pep talk, before climbing to the top, ready for the descent. It's quicker going down than climbing up.

 
Becks from Call of the Wild works with the children.  They all had a great time and came down the rock with big smiles on their faces.

Call of the Wild have supported us free of charge for nine years now. St John's Ambulance and Natural Resources Wales both waived their fee to support our fundraising and Bob Grainger took photographs for keyrings and fridge magnets and he has made a donation - also he lets me use his pictures on this blog and the BLF website. These two pictures of the children are his. Thanks to all these people for their support.



 

If you would like to donate to help us raise money for research into lung disease and to help fund other necessary work, go to  https://www.justgiving.com/BE-Neath-abseil to find our justgiving page.


Fire Safety

Our fireman gave us some really useful tips on fire safety and showed us a video which showed just how alarmingly rapidly a fire can spread.

He had an easily remembered message if confronted by a fire - The Three Outs

1. Never try to put it OUT.
2. Get OUT.
3. Call the fire service OUT.

Then we talked about the many things we can do to help prevent fires in our own homes. These are all quite simple things we can all do

• Don't leave appliances on, just running, when you don't need to. Switch off when not in use, to prevent overheating.
• Test fire alarms regularly, at least once a week.
• If you don't have fire alarms, call the fire service near you and they will come and fit them free of charge.
• When you go to bed at night close all internal doors. This slows down the speed the fire will spread should one happen during the night.
• Always have a planned escape route.
• Keep the keys in, or very close to the external door. A key could be very difficult to locate, or easily dropped and lost in a smoke filled room.
• If you have an electric blanket, take it along to a local health and wellbeing roadshow, and the fire service will check it and replace it free of charge, if it is faulty. If you don't know of one happening near you, call your local fire service and they will advise you where to go, or maybe arrange a home safety check for you.

And remember, these are simple things to do, just common sense really, and house fires are pretty rare - MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAPPEN TO YOU !!!

Then we touched on safety of fire near oxygen - the message is it's not safe.

• Dever use oxygen while smoking
• Don't let others smoke near you when using oxygen
• Don't use oxygen near an open flame such as a gas cooker, gas fire or open fire.

Fundraising Abseil

It's that time of year again, when we launch our annual fundraiser - Abseil at Dinas Rock !

Every year about thirty people abseil , have a great experience, raise sponsor money for British Lung Foundation to use to back research projects into various aspects of lung health, prevention, cures, better care - the list goes on.

Over the years we have raised just over £40,000 for this great cause. call of the Wild, St John's Ambulance and Natural Resources Wales have all waived their fees, so thanks to their generosity we can raise more money for this research. If you would like to support us, just hit the link below to donate on justgiving.

thank you

https://www.justgiving.com/BE-Neath-abseil

 

Inhalers and a holistic approach

Ali Sparkes and Maria, from the Medicine Centre in Neath, talked at length about lung health both the traditional and a more holistic approach.
Ali spoke mostly about all the different inhalers available and the different jobs they do, whether they are short acting or long acting. Also she made sure we all knew how to inhale the medications properly - as we all know, different ways foe different inhalers.
Maria's interest is in Chinese medicine. She brought along various seeds for us to try which could supplement our diets.
We learned that all dairy foods (milk, yoghurt, chocolate etc) are bad for mucus, whilepumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, quinoa, black kale and pot barley are so full of nutrients, we only need sprinkle a little into our food, especially when appetite is poor due to general ill health.
If you don't have a health food shop close by, most of these things are avialable now in your local supermarkets. So, why not give it a go and give yourself a boost ?

Meeting the new man

This is my first entry for 2015.

A very Happy New Year to all our readers.

 

 

We were very pleased to be able to meet and welcome our new head of BLF Wales, Joseph Carter. We had a nice long chat over coffee and biscuits, about his plans and ideas and we brought him up to date with all the things we have been doing and campaigns we have become involved in.

 

 



Christmas Celebration

Once again, a great time was had by all. It was lovely to be able to welcome members of Breathe Easy Swansea Bay and Carmarthen to our annual bash as well as Chris Mulholland and Matthew Collins from British Lung Foundation. The ladies from Briton Ferry Health and Wellbeing Group joined us for some fun chair exercises.

First of all the "professionals" showed us how to do it properly - then we had a go and managed to tie our arms and legs in knots.

 

 No matter how many times the team leader demonstrated, arms and legs went off in the wrong directions.

Now what are we supposed to do - stress balls are being handed out. This seems to be a recipe for tangled thumbs and fingers.

Yes !! I was right, it was.

 

 

It was an opportunity for us all to be able to say goodbye to Chris, as she is leaving British Lung Foundation to move on to pastures new, so it was great to be able to present her with a cheque for £4,261.00, which is the sum Breathe Easy Neath raised this year for BLF. Then we gave Chris a more modest leaving gift in appreciation of all her hard work on behalf of people living with lung conditions here in Wales, and for her frienship over the years. We are also sorry to be losing Matthew early in the New Year. He is moving to the midlands to work. It's all change in the Welsh BLF office in Swansea.