What compelled me to write was to slip a little humanity into our system, hidden in a conventional textbook. It rather took over my life, edition after edition, so as I tiptoe towards retirement I’m looking for an editor to take it over, as I build up some good contributors (the book is on respiratory physio). It’s helpful to be a bit of an obsessive. But it’s mega-rewarding – nothing matches finding a juicy bit of off-piste research, or the satisfaction of getting a sentence just right.
Back in the early 90s I was a fledgling respiratory physiotherapist looking for texts that related to the experiences of the elderly patients I was seeing. Simon Williams' Chronic Respiratory Illness was one, Alex Hough's was the other. I still have my 1991 edit of Physiotherapy in Respiratory Care and can remember how you said that breathlessness was entirely subjective, like pain, and no-one but the sufferer could ever fully understand it. Your description of the fear people experience choking from breathlessness and slow agony of death still haunt me. Such amazing writing, it inspired me to think that there was more to physiotherapy than just FEV1s and Shuttle Walk tests. Thank you for the comment, Alex, and for pushing me to be a better physio.
What compelled me to write was to slip a little humanity into our system, hidden in a conventional textbook. It rather took over my life, edition after edition, so as I tiptoe towards retirement I’m looking for an editor to take it over, as I build up some good contributors (the book is on respiratory physio). It’s helpful to be a bit of an obsessive. But it’s mega-rewarding – nothing matches finding a juicy bit of off-piste research, or the satisfaction of getting a sentence just right.
www.alexhough.com
Back in the early 90s I was a fledgling respiratory physiotherapist looking for texts that related to the experiences of the elderly patients I was seeing. Simon Williams' Chronic Respiratory Illness was one, Alex Hough's was the other. I still have my 1991 edit of Physiotherapy in Respiratory Care and can remember how you said that breathlessness was entirely subjective, like pain, and no-one but the sufferer could ever fully understand it. Your description of the fear people experience choking from breathlessness and slow agony of death still haunt me. Such amazing writing, it inspired me to think that there was more to physiotherapy than just FEV1s and Shuttle Walk tests. Thank you for the comment, Alex, and for pushing me to be a better physio.