David’s Story

David is a husband, father and grandfather. He loves animals and has owned horses, chickens, ducks, dogs, rabbits, goldfish and cats! When he was in Uganda he saw Gorillas living wild.

His father was in the army which led to to spending time in spent time in West Africa and Jenya. This fostered a love of travel and he went into the Pantanal in South America. He worked for 53 years in education and trained over 1,000 teachers.

He has been visiting the Living Well Service at the Hospice and kindly shared his experience:

How did you hear of the Living Well Service at the Hospice?

I was referred from someone at the Oncology Department at Addenbrookes Hospital. He always follows up after I’ve had my oncology visit to see how it’s going and he points me in different directions, this being one of them.

What do you do at the Living Well sessions?

I came to my first session on a Tuesday and we were exploring all different aspects about the service that were available: like massages, different things that were happening, people coming to talk about various things and I gained a lot out of that.

I surprised myself one week and wrote a poem! It’s now on the wall in the Living Well lounge.

I later started attending on a Friday, which made me happy. I enjoyed coming because of the people I met. They were supportive and helpful also. I really enjoyed the twelve Friday sessions and I got to meet different people – some I’d met before. Most of them mentioned their different ailments to me which was reassuring because we all swapped our particular stories and they became friends. We’ve created a WhatsApp group and we meet and gather for meals in the Bistro, even when we are not here for a session.

How has the Living Well Service helped you?

Being here has brought me more out of my shell because I am known to keep things to myself but here, I think it helps to share, to open up. When people talk to me I don’t want pity. Sharing things definitely is the key to helping you to be stronger and not being morbid because you can talk about it and laugh – and that’s what we do. A lot of us, we have a good laugh.

I particularly enjoy the exercise with Sharon. When we go to the gym we choose the music and have a great deal of fun in that half hour. In fact, sometimes it’s more than half an hour but we’ve created it more like a disco and it’s something to look forward to and it makes you exercise better.

I enjoy the meditation sessions with Daksha and Qigong exercises with Diego too. I enjoy talking to the volunteers when I get a hand massage from time to time.

When I was first diagnosed I had a bad fall and broke my wrist, and my elbow in three places, my little pinkie and four ribs, so I’ve always been very conscious of falling. The Occupational Therapists at the hospital first helped me with equipment and exercises and I would be interested to talk to them here about chair exercises to do.

My wife also enjoys coming to the Carers Group every fortnight.

What would you say to someone who is thinking of coming to the Living Well Sessions?

Do it! Go for it! It’s a very good service.

I’m going to leave a contribution in my will but I joke that you are going to have to wait a long time for that.

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Our ‘Outstanding’ services are provided free of charge to patients and their families. Our aim being to provide the highest quality care, helping people to make every moment count. You can find out more about how we are funded here: arhc.org.uk/how-we-are-funded.