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Welcome to the penultimate post of the WEGO Health ‘Advocating for Another’ Carnival.  Hope you all have enjoyed the posts so far.  Today’s prompt reads as follows:

Write a letter to your community and share a story of your own with them.  Extra points if you record yourself reading the letter telegram style! 

To those within my health community

I would first like to say thank you to all of you who have supported me and sent me messages during the bad times and shared my joy during the good.  Would also like to thank you for your friendship and kind words that you have written to me, and becoming a part of my ‘online’ family.  You are all unique and special, and although we all have difficulties and feel that we are unable to do certain activities, one thing that I have learnt and would like to share with you, is we all have something of valuable to offer.

It has taken me a long time to realise this, but is of something of value that I would love to share.   As most of you know, I regularly volunteer one day of my time to help at a local mental health   resource centre.  Recently, the Centre held an Open day and was looking for volunteers to go out with a collection bucket for monetary donations.  As I have significant weakness in my legs, I was unable to go out with the other volunteers in case my legs gave way.  However, I came to realise that although I was unable to volunteer in this way, there were plenty of other ways that I could help out.  For example, I am able to:

  • sit down and help make sandwiches and refreshments
  • with my crutch am able to go and greet people at the door and welcome them inside
  • during the Open Day itself I was on hand to give the ladies a pampering session with hand massages and painting nails
  • sit down and talk to the visitors

Often on the days I volunteer, I have started to even help deliver some of the courses that the Centre offers such as those on Stress and Anxiety Management – and is great seeing service users leaving these courses more confident and happier than when they arrived!  So, if some of you are reading this and thinking that due to circumstances you are unable to do this or that, than I am sure it is not sure, and even if it requires some deep thought, there might be ways around the problem.  A solution that makes it possible for you to achieve whatever it is you want to do.  And am sure that there are lots of ways that you are able to help organisations and volunteer your time.   After all we all have a variety of skills to offer!

From

Rhiann x

Hey Friends

Me again, for another post to my blog.  Hope all of you are OK.  I have to admit, lately I am struggling – feeling down, alone, sometimes I feel as if I have no friends or no-one that I can turn to – although absolutely no idea as to why I have been feeling like this…

May be down to the deterioration of my condition – the dizziness, which has been constant for some time now, seems to have become more intense, as well as the episodes of vertigo becoming much more frequent, and are often times are worse to deal with than the constant dizziness, especially when you take into account the visual disturbances – vision becoming foggy or blurry and unable to focus on anything, sometimes not even being able to recognise what I am looking at.

As well as that, my legs seem to be gradually becoming worse too – experiencing many ‘drop attacks’ in which my legs suddenly give way from under me, with no warning.  That is the one of the hardest things to deal with also – the unpredictability of it all – going out perhaps, not knowing whether my legs will collapse, and when you take into account that often I find myself often unable to get up after these ‘attacks’ making plans to go anywhere becomes very difficult.

Take one example: on a Monday, I volunteer for a local Mental Health charity, which I have done for a couple of years now.  So, on my way, my Dad takes me to a local supermarket to go and buy some lunch, and last Monday was no exception.  However, whilst  buying my lunch, my legs gave way, and like on several occasions found difficulty in being able to get back on my feet again as my legs were so weak, and felt as if they were trembling a lot, so consequently  my Dad had to take me back to the car and buy lunch for me.  Legs never really recovered after that, so felt as if I wasn’t much use at the Centre, but often is nice just to get out of the house for a few hours.

Later on, had another appointment with the doctor.  Basically, told him of all the difficulties I have been having, the seemingly progression and deterioration of the condition, etc.  And once again was told “unfortunately, with conditions like these it isn’t much that we can do, and  no drugs are going to help with the weakness…”, basically another way of saying “There isn’t anything we can do, you just have to live with it.”  Mum even asked whether there was any possibility that I may need to use a wheelchair in the future, and the doctor just nodded his head in agreement, that may be my future…  I was shocked and a little upset, as I honestly never really thought that I may need one, people have said that maybe I should, but never really thought that I may need to actually us one, more so for going out, as still need to use the muscles so they don’t atrophy.  But if I need one, then so be it, as there are worse things in life, hey?

I have been often told that I need to exercise and make use of the muscles as often and as much as I can, however, as I am unable to stand for very long, it makes finding any forms of exercise that I am able to do very difficult, my legs and problems with balance and co-ordination, etc. My exercise bike has been increasingly difficult to use as often feel that I am going to fall off, and the Wii Fit that we have does not often recognise me during some of the games as when you are required to stand still, my body is swaying back and forth…

However, I have recently bought a machine that hopefully may increase the strength in legs (although isn’t  guaranteed that it will work) and also keep me fit and in shape.  It is called an Aeropilates Machine  –  a machine that incorporates pilates exercises with a resistance machine….

AeroPilates 4695 4 Corded Machine and Cardio Board
AeroPilates 4695 4 Corded Machine and Cardio Board

“Pilates was invented by Joseph Pilates in the 1920s as a way of incorporating a full body workout to build muscle and core strength. Over time pilates has come to be the preferred means of exercise for a wide range of people from athletes and dancers to those with common household injuries like injured backs. It’s benefits are wide-reaching and provide not only fitness and toning, but also help with injuries that you might have. An aero pilates machine apply the basic principles and effectively ‘super charge’ your workout so that you reap the rewards of pilates with an aerobic workout that aids with blood flow and muscle growth.”

Anyway, I’ll be off now, doing some exercises on my new AeroPilates machine – fingers crossed that I will see some benefits soon…

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