Mum had been a smoker when she was younger but who wasn’t in the 60's?! When she was young smoking was common place, although when I was working with her in her hairdressing business most of her cigarettes burnt away in the ash tray before she smoked them. In her early 40’s she had breathing problems, she went to the doctors and was diagnosed with Asthma or so she told us her family!!! With this in mind she made the decision to give up smoking! In her words "if she wouldn’t help herself why should the doctors”. The thing she didn’t tell anyone was that she had been diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) as well as Asthma! She carried on as usual doing her care work, going out, looking after her family and grandchildren, holidays, and line dancing. She never complained about the difficulties her complaint caused her, she just got on with life making the most of everything but with age things were getting more difficult, she eventually told us about her COPD but that was it, she made no big deal of it!! As she progressed on to her mid 60’s the chest infections became more frequent holidays stopped as unfortunately it was just too much for her! Two years ago mum became very ill, we thought she wouldn’t recover from this latest bout of chest infections but she fought back and recovered, she was referred to a breathing clinic and slowly after six months of antibiotics and therapy she recovered but was never quite the same again!! The last two years had been a daily struggle but she plodded on until the middle of last year when she had problems with walking and was told she needed a new hip! Mum being mum was all for it thinking of the new lease of life a new hip would give her, she could get back to doing one or two line dances instead of just watching! The operation itself was a success, the night of her operation dad and I visited and she was bright as a button, she was so fussy she felt ok and could start to feel her toes again!! The next day she started the physio and within a couple of days had got to walking half of the ward but early Thursday morning she had a respiratory arrest! Mum was transferred to ITU where they did their very best for her and she was monitored closely. The rest is history mum passed away 10 days later because of pneumonia and sepsis! Mum would have wanted her death to help others if possible and because of her COPD and Asthma we decided to have donations to the British Lung Foundation