"Recognizing we are all equal to being subject to aging, sickness, and death is the basis for compassion."
- A Buddhist value
"I am tired from a hard day’s work of providing physiotherapy for 82 people and all I can think of is…I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow! "- Elise
I wake up each and every morning knowing that I will be making a difference in a person's life. My patients are faced with life altering health conditions which have made their daily tasks difficult to perform. I am inspired by their ability to cope with the modifications their condition has introduced into their life. For example, a twice stricken stroke patient using assistance to walk again. These small steps of improvement mean so much to them as they are able to gain control over their body.
Furthermore, when assisting patients with arthritis it has been the most difficult to treat. The reduction of cartilage around the boney joints due to arthritis has limited the use of their wrists, fingers, knees, and ankles. Most patients who receive physical treatment continue to feel pain and live with swollen joints. For example, a sedentary senior has the muscular strength to walk but can't because there is not enough to cushion in their knee joints.
According to Dr. Gilles Boire, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sherbrooke “We lack the means of telling someone at the start of inflammatory arthritis how their disease will progress. This is a critical quality of life issue. Developing an accurate method to diagnose disease severity is essential. Many patients with inflammatory arthritis don’t respond to strong treatments, perhaps because these treatments are used too late in the course of the disease. A reliable diagnosis will allow rheumatologists to tell the difference between people who really need advanced medications and those who do not. This information will ease access to these treatments for those who need them most. Another result is that the cost burden on our health-care system would be relieved.” Read More
This is really insightful, thanks for sharing. It's hard to comprehend why arthritis isn't taken more seriously by so many... the hugely negative impact on quality of life, not just from pain but from the fatigue and depression that often accompany chronic pain, can be a difficult story to hear but it's so important that we tell it. What tends to surprise people most is the fact that it's not just a disease of the elderly - 1 in 1000 children under the age of 16 in Canada are living with arthritis, and 60% of the more than 4 million Canadians living with arthrits are under the age of 65 (i.e. of working age)!
ReplyDeleteYou're making such a POSITIVE impact every day, not only at work but now as a member of the Joints In Motion team raising funds and further awareness about what this disease is really about.