Snowflakes and Spoons

Occupational therapy strives to use a holistic treatment approach to improve a person's day to day functioning. Balancing life and engaging in work, leisure and personal management by teaching new skills or adapting task or environment is a high priority for OTs. By using meaningful activities we encourage clients to live their life to their personal best. This can be done in a group setting or on an individual either on hospital or on an outpatient basis. So what services can an Occupational Therapist offer an adult client with a chronic illness? “As much as 90% of the management of a chronic condition must be performed, not by health care providers, but by the person who has the condition.” ‐ California Healthcare Foundation, 2008 whether it's managing your medication, putting on your own socks or remembering where you left the keys OT is the profession to help you. Here are 10 other topics that an OT can include in your treatment:       1)  ...

Walk a mile in a pair of MG shoes Myasthenia gravis is a chronic neurological autoimmune disease with no current cure. It is listed as a rare disease. Through advocacy and awareness, we strive to educate, support and give hope. If you have ever wondered what it is like to live daily with MG? Why not take a read about how it feels to walk in our shoes. Brain fog clogs   Heavy, inflexible and embarrassing (if you're not from the Netherlands). You can walk or shuffle in these foreign foot coverings, but there is no running in brain fog clogs. You can be in the middle of a sentence and struggle to think of a common word. ‘Please pass the …… thingy….with the lid.... the umm….jam!’ It's more than being forgetful, it's like your trying to remember a new language. Scuba flippers As you fit them on, they snugly hug your feet. You can imagine yourself gliding through the water like a mermaid. The only problem is that you are still on land, mile...

How Snowflakes are formed Myasthenia Gravis (MG) is a chronic autoimmune neurological disease. (1)   What a mouthful! It has a world prevalence of between 25 and 142 per million  (2) indicating that those affected, especially in South Africa, are few and far apart. MG is often called the snowflake   disease   due to the fluctuating symptoms experienced from one person to another. Each snowflake has a similar primary ice crystal base, but the internal order of the primary crystal, and exposure to different atmospheric conditions during the formation of its crystal arms results in its unique appearance.  (3) S imilarly, MG is normally identified by muscle fatigue and weakness; this would be the primary crystal  (1)  . Each individual's genetic make-up, the internal order of the crystal, and their unique environmental and lifestyle stressors, the atmospheric conditions, results in each MG warrior's unique set of symptoms....