Body Leader of the Month

Hey check me out, I've been awarded the title of Body Leader of the Month!

I've answered some different questions as part of the interview than I've covered here in the past so the article might be interesting to you.

A couple of notes about the article and pics:

Yes, Lori is short for Lorraine.  It's funny how different people know you by different parts of your name.  My husband calls me Lorraine (just as I use his full name rather than Mike as just about everyone else calls him) and this usually extends to certain groups of people where I've been introduced by him, or introduced where my 'legal' name has been provided. My brothers and sister still refer to me as Rain. One of my best friends used to call me Miss Rainee and that's now Mrs Rainee since I've been married.  Mostly though people call me Lori.  It's a lot easier to spell for people, too!

For the locals, you should be able to spot the venue of the first picture.  This was my very first outing and I wanted it to be somewhere that I felt safe so it's somewhere that I spend a fair amount of time. You can see my crutches in the picture.  If you can guess where it is, there might even be a prize for you!

The Pilates picture is actually from this morning.  We took a whole series of them and I'll post some more of them here.  This is a picture of roll ins from curls (bridges).  I've been doing these for a little while and think that some of the other exercises are a little more impressive, so I'll post those soon!

The final picture is from the hospital when I was first learning to walk again.  At this time I was still using the rollater so there was a fair amount of weight being put through my hands on the rails to walk.  The white lines helped me with my alignment.  There was a lot of looking down and focusing on my feet while I was walking within the rails.  In the beginning it almost felt like the messages from my brain  didn't get through to my feet unless I looked really hard at them!  (That plan doesn't really work all the time.  Sometimes you can look really hard at the offending limb and it still won't move.  They do now, so that's the main thing!)

Unified Healthcare

The RA Guy

I read an awesome blog post on the RA Guy's blog called: Rheumatoid Arthritis Healing Center.    It's an old post definitely worth revisiting.  The key idea I love about in this post is that all your health professionals are in one place and work together to help you have the best possible life all in a spa like setting combining the traditional medical appointment with your rheumatologist  with everything else that can make a difference; yoga, acupuncture, Physio, hydro, support groups, psychologists, doctors in other specialties and more.  The list was pretty comprehensive and the only thing I can think of to add is Pilates as it's something that has made a big difference for me.

I think that bringing all of the health professionals together like this would be awesome.  The people that would choose to work in this kind of environment would be ones that I would want to see.  People who understand that it isn't going to be just the medicine that is going to help.  Healthcare is slowly changing and the professionals that I have found to work with have been great.  For a long time and for a lot of doctors that I have seen anything out of the ordinary is seen as 'new fangled hippy rubbish' that doesn't do anything.  I once had a rheumatologist remark that the physio treatment I was receiving probably wasn't doing anything for me.  I was pretty upset by that as I when I came to him I was so happy with the increases to the range of movement that I was seeing and the improvement in my overall health and wellbeing, I couldn't believe that he would discount the effectiveness of the treatment.  Seriously, even if it was all in my head, what was the harm?  Why criticise? He went on to tell me that I couldn't afford to put on any weight and I pretty well had no options to improve my quality of life.  I found another specialist.  Thankfully, not all doctors are in the stone age. The team that I eventually found is one that I would expect to fit in to this concept quite well.

Attitudes are changing and it isn't just health professionals that need to come to the party.  We do too.  Having a community centre like feel will help visitors to maybe explore other services that will help them reach their full potential.  All aspects of life and body maintenance in one place is an awesome way to kick start the process.  The alternative is to spend years finding them which is something many don't have the confidence or resources to do.

The RA Guy has since updated his concept and posted it on his blog at: Autoimmune Wellness Center.  There is even a picture of what it might look like.  Check it out.  I'm sure you'll like it as much as I do.