This is Hospice Care’, is a national campaign organised by Hospice UK, which uses real stories to highlight hospice care in action and to encourage people to consider leaving a gift in their Will to help protect hospice care for all, for now, forever.
As part of this year’s campaign, we are highlighting some of the unexpected ways we work with our patients to help them have the best quality of life possible – like our Relax and Breathe Group.
Breathlessness can be a scary symptom that makes people feel very vulnerable. At Farleigh Hospice’s Relax and Breathe group, patients are taught new and unexpected techniques to help them to control their breathing. Emily Stowe, Farleigh’s Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist, explains how this group helps to improve their quality of life.
“The Relax and Breathe group is a one-day session for people who are having problems with breathlessness and their carers. Most of them either have advanced Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or heart failure, but some are also living with lung cancer and other similar conditions.
When someone become breathless, they may spend all of their energy focusing on their breathing because they’re worrying about their next breath every second of the day. You can imagine how draining that would be.
We encourage our patients to try different techniques to help with their breathing so they can find out what works best for them. Then they have a ‘toolbox’ of practical ideas that they can use whenever they are feeling breathless.
When we ask them to try blowing bubbles, they normally have a chuckle and say that they weren’t expecting to do that!
To be able to blow a bubble, you have to take a deep breath in and then control a slow breath out. That is the same slow breath that they would use to control their breathing during a breathless episode.
Yes, they’re still focusing on their breath, but they’re distracted from their breathlessness and thinking about getting that bubble blown. They can get quite competitive, seeing who can blow the biggest one! Fairly quickly, they move from being surprised to realising that this technique really does work for them.
We also teach relaxation and meditation techniques and gentle exercise to help our patients manage the anxiety caused by their breathlessness. This includes Tai Chi which is a type of exercise that can be easily adapted depending on people’s ability. Many of them have not tried this before and it’s another thing that they weren’t expecting to learn about at Farleigh Hospice.
Patients are also given practical advice about equipment and adaptions they can make in their daily life, such as walking aids and keeping a stool in the kitchen so they can sit down when they’re making food.
We’ve had some great feedback about Relax and Breathe. The group helps our patients to learn more about their condition and what will help them to manage it, so they leave feeling more confident and capable of dealing with any future episodes of breathlessness.”
When an adult in mid Essex has a life-limiting illness, Farleigh Hospice is here to support them to manage their symptoms so they can do the things that matter most to them. This is only possible because someone else remembered us in their Will.
By leaving a gift to Farleigh in your Will, you can help local hospice care live on for all, for now, forever.