Have you heard of Common Variable Immune Deficiency?
Well, neither had I until an old friend died of it recently.
When we were students together Dave and I lived together, drank together, worked together, fought side by side, played music together.
Both of us were passionate about weight lifting, physical fitness and the martial arts. Dave explored Aikido whilst I preferred Shotokan Karate.
However, when we moved to different countries for a while we lost touch and as sometimes seems to happen, the heart connection was lost.
Anyway Dave made the Independent Newspaper on the 2nd November, 2008.
Although not in a way any of us would have liked.
He featured in an article "Cancer survival rates hampered by shortage of NHS pathologists"
The Independent's article talked about how skill shortages were delaying diagnosis.
"Allergies are on the increase but thousands of sufferers do not have access to the UK's 59 immunologists. David Stobbart, 59, from Inverness, was diagnosed with common variable immune deficiency after he was finally referred to an immunologist 19 years after he first became ill.
"From the age of 30 I repeatedly went to see my GP with chest infections and I must have taken hundreds of antibiotics," he said. "The doctors didn't realise there was something wrong with my immune system until my lungs were permanently damaged."
David's funeral was yesterday and it is hard to imagine what his remaining months must have been like.
Dave was a strong and courageous man and like all of us - too young to die.
As the verses unfold and your soul suffers the long day,
And the twelve o’clock gloom spins the room,
You struggle on your way.
Well don’t you sigh, don’t you cry,
Lick the dust from your eye
Life’s a long song.
But the tune ends too soon for us all
“Life is a Long Song”
Ian Anderson, Chrysalis Music
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