A Felixstowe group started by a nurse who wanted to help her husband has celebrated its 10th anniversary.
On Tuesday, more than 50 people came together at the Spa Pavilion in Undercliff Road West to wish Lung@Heart a happy birthday.
When Valerie Norman started the group Lung@Heart in 2014, the group had just seven members.
They had met through their pulmonary rehab course at Ipswich Hospital, where Mrs Norman is a respiratory nurse.
Her husband Christopher Norman was taking part in the course, having been diagnosed with hereditary myopathy with early respiratory failure on their honeymoon in 2010.
The happy couple had tied the knot on July 10, and had set off on their grand tour of Canada, when Mr Norman was suddenly taken ill, and respiratory arrested in San Francisco.
“It was such a scary time,” remembered Mrs Norman. Being a respiratory nurse, she was all too aware of how serious his condition was.
Mr Norman spent several weeks in intensive care in America, before being flown back to England, first to West Suffolk Hospital and then to Ipswich. He was finally discharged on Christmas Eve of 2010.
Mr Norman underwent a course of pulmonary rehab, which includes light exercises to built up patients’ strength.
“But after the six-week course, there was nothing,” said Mrs Norman. She explained that patients will initially benefit from the exercise, but deteriorate in the subsequent weeks, and so will require a second course.
“There were about seven people on that course, and we thought, why don’t we start our own group?”
So, in 2014, the group was formed, which Mrs Norman runs with her daughter, Christina Fisher.
Soon, the group outgrew its room at the former Felixstowe fire station, and now meets twice a week at Brackenbury Sports Centre.
Pre-Covid, 70 people were regularly coming together.
“When we first started, I had the motto that everybody got a hug when they came in, and again when they left,” said Mrs Norman.
While Covid put paid to the hugs for a time, she said the sentiment is very much still present.
Sadly, Mr Norman passed away on June 26, 2015. However, Mrs Norman and her daughter have continued to run the group in his memory.
“They’re like my extended family now, so how could I leave them?” said Mrs Norman.
Lung@Heart meets at Brackenbury Sports Centre on Tuesdays from 11am to 1pm, and on Fridays from 1.30pm to 2.30pm.
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