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I'd recommend looking at the following website: www.ahta.org . It's the American Horticultural Therapy Association
website. I am involved with them through the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, Mo.. I learned to walk again in my garden. I was denied therapy by the state medical board and did my own therapy in the garden before I ever knew about them. Now I'm working with other people incouraging them to move again in the garden. There isn't a better place for therapy!
I have RA and had a spinal fusion twenty five years ago. I work till I can't then rest. what takes the average person a few days will take me a month, But it still gets done. I've gotten away from tillers and turn my garden over with shovel and pitch fork. The constant shaking of the machine hurts more and causes my hands to swell so fooey on that
the feeling you get when your shovel sinks into the ground beats a tiller anyway. I have three bee hives and for me getting stung helps with the pain in my hands. Soon I'll have my Chickens back after the great raccoon massacre of 2010. (Wife was in the hospital and the kids forgot to put the chickens up we lost twenty five Buff Orphingtons in one night). On good days I get alot done, on not so good days I crawl to weed, On Bad days when a front moves through I'll feed and drink coffee on the back deck. As long as I don't allow my self to fall back into the self induced pity party I was having for over a year everything is fine. I thought my world was coming to an end till I went to the rhumatologist and saw a six year old girl with her poor little knees swollen to the size of a ripe cantalope and she was running as best she could and playing in the lobby waiting room. I watched in disbelief as she was a happy child and here I was a grumpy old man {55} Her mother told me she had been born with sever R/A and that was normal for her. She changed my outlook on this condition. Yes I still moan and groan but I back to doing what I love.
At first I was scared to ,worrying about the "what if's" like if I have an MS relapse who will weed, water and feel the animals? But I am realizing that my chances of relapsing are bigger if I sit around eating crap processed foods then if I get out their and grow and make my own:) Guess it's a win win! Thanks for all the positive encouragement keep it coming!
P.S I also just finished a great book called Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life that I found encouraging because the author himself had medical issues he was dealing with while running his farm.
MS is rough, Lizz. I imagine that all of the labor-intensive tasks that go with this lifestyle are so much more difficult with your condition.
I have had arthritis since I was 18 and I have a weird kind of diabetes that appears to just do as it pleases, no matter what drugs the doctors put me on. They tell me I'm going to die at approx. age 55 - I'm 48 now. I take it all as a challenge. I am determined to prove them wrong, make them eat their words, and heal myself, or at least prolong myself long past their prognosis, by changing the way I eat and work and live.
So, I just get up in the morning and get to work. I can't do everything others can, but I can do more than others think I can, which is good enough for me.
I admire your determination. Keep it going and you will keep yourself going, too.
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