COPD sufferer Ronnie Farrell and Nurse Ruth Loizides
THREE and a half years ago Ronnie Farrell was admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties and since then he’s transformed his life with the help of Community Respiratory Nurses.
80-year-old Ronnie lives with his wife Betty, in the beautiful countryside.
Ronnie said: “I was taken into hospital with a kind of flu type thing. Doctors discovered there that I had COPD attributed to heavy smoking, and they started to help me and treat me in the hospital. Through that experience I am now a lot better now than I was then, by the help of nurses and the hospital, the medication as well as stopping smoking.”
Ronnie shared the difficulties he had before being diagnosed with COPD.
He said “Three or four years ago if I would have walked down our drive (about 900 yards), down to the gate I’d have to stop a couple of times on the way and on the way back up again.
“Whereas now, doing the exercises and taking the right medication; I’m able to walk all the way to the bottom without stopping.
“I’d go upstairs here, to go to bed at night, there are two flights of stairs, and I’d have to stop and then go on to the next one. But now I walk all way up without even thinking about it.”
Before Ronnie had been in hospital he considered getting a stair-lift in his home to help him manage.
He had a company come to his home, measure and price it for him before he decided against it.
Ronnie was concerned that he would end up using it too much.
After Ronnie’s release from hospital he was treated at home by his Community Respiratory Nurse Ruth Loizides.
Ruth believes that care provided in peoples own homes offers an insight that helps aid peoples recoveries.
She said: “The benefit of community based care is that the patient wants to be at home. Even when very unwell they want to be in their own home.
“You can see a truer picture of someone when you know what their home environment is like. You know the temperature of the house, you know the condition of their inhalers and the condition of their nebuliser machine, you know what kind of support they have, what kind of activities they’re doing.
“It’s also easier to monitor their overall medication and exercise programme and their overall activity in their home is better.
“They do tend to have a more positive attitude being at home because they’re able to get up and do bits and pieces. Just small things rather than sitting in a hospital bed. They do feel more encouraged and more inclined to do self-rehabilitation which is then part of their healing process.”
She added that it was great now to see how far Ronnie had come on thanks to his care and his personal determination.
She said: “It’s lovely to see the difference in Ronnie now. When I had previously been visiting Ronnie, he would have been very debilitated and as he talks about the walking, he was so limited. A couple of hundred yards and even achieving that would have been a struggle for him.
“For him now to get that bit further and to get out to the garden again is really lovely.”
Ronnie believes that without the support and first class care of the Community Respiratory Nurses he wouldn’t be in the condition he is now, he said “It’s all due to the help I got from nurses coming round.” He also attributed it to his own desire to get better.
“It’s all little things like that that can impact on the condition.”
He said: “I wanted to get as well as I could. Years ago I wouldn’t have got through the hospital and nurses.
“Looking at this care in the community, they’d want an awful lot more nurses like Ruth, coming and talking to people in the community. It’s the only way it’s going to work. If not, you’re going to be in and out of hospital like a yo-yo.”
Alongside the nurses visits Ronnie attended Pulmonary Rehabilitation at hospital he was thankful for it keeping him on-track with his recovery.
He said “Going back into the hospital afterwards for pulmonary rehabilitation was good. For me, it kept me right. It’s very hard to get that.
“When I first heard about it I wasn’t keen on it. I didn’t want to do it. I thought it was something like nurses telling you what to do and that. But once you went into it, it was completely different story for me.
“I always looked forward to it once a week.
“I spoke to someone who hadn’t taken it up. They were under the impression it was like taking an exam. I’m not sure if they were lead wrong, but they didn’t want to do that. But I was telling them it was very different to that.”
Part of what Ronnie enjoyed about it was a sense of competition and accomplishment within the group of people attending every week.
He said: “With the 15 or 16 people there every week, I learned as much from them as I did the nurses. It was kind of like a club and maybe a bit of a competition. One week you’d see someone doing really well and you wanted to do better than them.”
For Ronnie, he’s received a new lease of life through the work of the Community Respiratory Nurses and had nothing but kind words for the work they’ve done.
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