From 1991 to 1994 I continued having that, went to my work and just more or less agreed I had osteoporosis. Nothing much was done about it at that time. And all of a sudden in the press there was an interview with some lady who had osteoporosis. She turned out to be the founding member chair of the [city] group, support group. So I phoned her and poured out my heart to her and got all the sort of attention which I needed and got a bit more support. And went back to the I was still working. Well, she said, You, you can do computing. Can you maybe come and do some work for me as, no, not a, not work as such, but a bit of voluntary stuff like doing the newsletter? However, I had to say I didn’t have time at the time.

And in January 94 I went back to the osteoporosis group and offered my services, which were looking for committee members. And I thought, Most people run a mile. [laugh] However, she said, Yes, would you please do the newsletter. Which has been, I’ve done that ever since. And eventually I became the chair of the group.

Well, we meet once a month, the second Thursday each month and we try to have, well, we try to have speakers that are to do with osteoporosis. We try to have a doctor, one of the osteoporosis nurses, a physiotherapist and hopefully a nutritionist is supposed to be there. It doesn’t always work out. We have got, we have several patrons. We have a political patron. We have a physiotherapist, that was the one that started off the exercise as a patron. We have a Glasgow writer as a patron. And we also have a, another clinician as patron. So we can always go to them and say, Will you please come and give us a talk And people come along and say to us, Oh, I thought you were talking about osteoporosis.

And this is where I come out with this thing again. But we’re not here to dwell on the fact we have osteoporosis. We’ll talk to you about it. We’ll give you our support. We’ll tell you what we have found Because we’ve all been at the stage of being, feeling isolated, feeling, What on earth has happened to me But I think part of the thing is that they describe it as being crumbling bones. And I think the fear of that is you could look at one of these characters in a cartoon where someone raps you over the hand walks away with you in the end because your bones have crumbled into the bottom of your body. And I just say, Well, that’s not really what it means. It means do something about it’ Although I must admit it isn’t always possible. People have got a lot of things, and they have osteoporosis come along with other things involved that you think, Well, okay, you need support, so what can we.. And part of it is the fact that we can’t, we don’t give medical advice, we’re not medically qualified. But what we can do is say, Well, if you speak to Dr so-and-so or.. Well, we’re very fortunate, the doctors are very very helpful with us, very helpful and very willing to come and talk to us. And they, I think probably because we are very much involved with the health board as well and we’ve got the support of the health board. And they come along, the nurses are great, they come along and talk to us about, they tell us about different sort of things, all different aspect of things. We’ve had an occupational therapist along to talk to us. Which was good, because it means that we know. it’s especially good if we’ve got a newcomer at the group that doesn’t know anything about it. Most of us are old hands at the group, I’ve heard this story before But it’s good to refresh our memories about things. And it’s especially good if a newcomer comes along that’s totally, I’ve got osteoporosis. What am I going to do

And they find out, Well, you can sit and enjoy our company. That’s one of the things you can do And, well, we try to have other things like, we have, because we live in this city, we try to have something which is related to the city. Because somebody once asked me, when I was chair of the group, Why are you having this.. I can’t remember what the thing was. And I said, Well, it’s because we are in the city and its part of the history of the city and it’s good to find out about it as well

And do you know how the exercise group started, whose idea it was?

Well, yes, the then consultant, the surgeon in the Infirmary, had been down to the physiotherapy department and asked the physiotherapist in charge if they could make up some exercises for his osteoporosis patients. Because people suspected I think at the time, now we’re talking about 19-, when would it be now? the early 90s, knew that exercise would be good but they didn’t know what, when, how or why it was good. So there was a young physiotherapist there who was, wanted to do her Masters degree, and she asked whether this particular aspect of things would be a good project for her thesis. And it was accepted, and that’s how it started. And it was really thanks to this consultant in this Infirmary that it all started. And then after that all the physiotherapists became, it became city-wide in the hospitals in, at that time. And then the leisure centres and the instructors in the leisure centres thought that would be a good idea as well. And it became more widespread. And it came up to the Infirmary and they were instructed by the physiotherapist or the particular one that did the exercises, but all of them knew about the things, what was good and what was bad for people who had osteoporosis. And they were told what to emphasise, what not to emphasise. And then they went out and they started up, in a couple of leisure centres they had a couple of these classes for people with osteoporosis. Then the health board got in on the act and it became the thing, and it’s very heavily subsidised by the health board now. And they recommend people to go.

In between times they were starting an exercise programme in another local hospital in the area. And it’s a, it was a young physiotherapist who was doing it as part of her studies and was accepted as the thing. And I was very fortunate to be taken on as part of the exercising group of the, the whole thing. Because the same as testing a drug and a placebo and the drug. The placebo in this case were the people that didn’t exercise and the people, the other people that got the drug were those who exercised. And the, we were measured at the start of our twelve weeks’ stint and measured at the end of the twelve weeks, of this time, as were the control group. Now those of us that had exercised had made some improvement, whether it was a bit more, a bit more brisk, a bit more confident maybe in some cases or we could stand up a bit easier or we could stretch even one centimetre more. And that’s really more or less what happened with the exercise thing. And at the end of the twelve weeks everyone became part of the exercises. Now it’s become part of the, our crowning glory in this area are the, is our exercise sessions.

Well, it was mainly medium impact e-, exercise that we did. But this particular physiotherapist had also, she brought in another instructor from, well, another nurse in the, a junior nurse in the hospital was doing this, this sort of thing as well. A lot of it was, well, we did circuit training, that sort of thing we did, part of it. Now circuit training, we’re talking about specially designed for people with osteoporosis. So it was kind of gentle type stuff, although it was medium impact type of stuff. I’m trying hard to think of what else I’ve done this sort of thing. First of all there was a lot, you’d to walk around briskly to get heated up. Then there was quite a bit of jumping up and down, skipping along sideways. I can’t describe it. I can’t even show it to you because [laugh].

And then bending, well, stretching exercises. All the things that you would be doing in an aerobics class as, as, I mean there, there’s not really much difference except that this would be geared less impact stuff than you would do in a, in a normal sort of class. And the people that go to the, when they start doing exercising here, they go along first of all and they’re very very gentle exercises, which are actually more gentle than we did when we started off. But you’ve got to encourage people that haven’t exercised for a long time that they can do it and make them feel they can do it. And when I say to them when I talk to them at any time and tell them about the things I do, they’re looking at me as if to say, Really But, yes, really you can do it, but you’ve got to build up to it very, very gradually and make sure that you’re okay I’ve always got to tell people if they’re going to take up exercise at all, make sure you talk to your GP, you talk to a physiotherapist, any, you must do all of these sort of things for your own safeguard.

I mean do you think that the physio who ran the courses was reassuring to people that they wouldn’t break a bone by doing exercise?

Well, they, they normally this is the fact, they all go happy to the hospitals, to the physiotherapists. Possibly I think in the back of your mind is you feel, If I fall, break a bone, I’m in the hospital, I’ll be taken straight away That’s never said, but I get that feeling.