Over the years, we all discover that many parts of our bodies don’t function quite as well as we expect them to and some unfortunate individuals seem destined to suffer from one problem after another all through their lives. However, many of those people who seem to suffer from countless health complaints often have a resilience that the rest of us can only envy.

I can name two such individuals connected with me who have displayed a determination that has kept them alive for a lot longer than medical science would have estimated. My father developed asthma as a teenager, which meant that he regularly went through bouts of breathlessness and had to use medication from a young age. Around the age of 45 he was hospitalised with a very severe asthma attack and soon after he suffered a cardiac arrest. We were told that he had roughly a fifty per cent chance of pulling through and we were told that if he did live there was a considerable likelihood that he would have experienced some level of brain damage as his brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long.

However, he did survive and his brain was not affected intellectually although his physical reflexes had slowed down somewhat. A few years later, whilst hospitalised again after another severe asthma attack, he advised the staff of other symptoms and was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Fortuitously it was at a very early stage and he had successful treatment for it.

Later in life, his lungs and heart became so badly damaged that he had no option than to be hooked up to a permanent oxygen feed and became completely housebound. His lungs were so awful that just shifting from one chair to another would make him gasp for breath and totally unable to manage anything else at all. Even lifting a glass to his mouth was impossible. He finally passed on two years ago, but to get to his seventies in spite of suffering from so many problems truly was an achievement.

The mother of a very good friend has suffered a similar list of health problems. She got polio as a youngster, was confined to an iron lung throughout her childhood and was told she would never walk again. She baffled the doctors by managing to walk and went on to have a career as a singer and after that became a nursery teacher. She married and gave birth to three children even though she had been advised that she was probably sterile, and spent years caring for her husband after he broke his neck and developed a severe heart infection.

However, after her husband’s death, she had a nasty fall which shattered her ankle and this, coupled with the onset of severe arthritis in both legs and arms, led to her becoming practically housebound. She developed a lung complaint and then began to have problems with her vision. An operation on one eye left her in a lot of pain, and although she was recommended Laser eye surgery for the other eye, she refused to have it done after the bad experience she’d had with the conventional eye surgery.

A chest infection a couple of years ago had a detrimental effect on her already diseased lungs and left her in hospital literally minutes from death, but somehow she managed to hang on to life and slowly recovered. However, she is now in need of a constant oxygen supply and has had no choice other than to move into a residential care home where her mobility problems and breathing complaints are checked daily.

Since moving into the home though, she is now able to mix with other people as opposed to spending most of her time alone at home. She now takes much more pride in her appearance, and has become a firm favourite with the carers due to her feisty opinions on life. Whilst she will always say that the place doesn’t feel like ‘home’, it has undoubtedly given her a greater zest for life. A recent trip to the optician again suggested that she have Laser eye treatment on her other eye as she was having problems even watching television, and this time she actually agreed to be referred to an eye specialist for a Laser eye surgery assessment.

She recently visited the local hospital where a very friendly specialist carried out the Laser eye treatment and at last she realised just how bad her vision had become. Her only complaint now? That when she uses the mirror, she can now see how old she looks!