Solstice's Reflections -- 13 years to Today - the BEST is NOW and Yet to Come!

It's a Sunday here in western Colorado and it is obvious we're near the winter solstice since about the time I typically like to go out for an evening walk it's getting dusky...  and it made me realize that it's been 13 years since I completed my fieldwork to become an occupational therapist.  The neat thing is, that today on the wonders of facebook, I was 'chatting' with an OT halfway across the world, where it's summer now.  She's going to contribute some content to the Forum area of Lumigrate.com and I'm very much looking forward, as always, to new information and another person who 'knows the stuff I do' to discuss. 

What we were comparing notes about is our education and how our services are billed for, what the challenges are for us as OTs, and what we'd like to accomplish with the Forum / Therapies - Occupational area of the website here.  I think it's pretty neat that in 13 'short years' that didn't kill me, I'm able to have accomplished this in the calendar year of 2009.  Lumigrate launched just after spring equinox, so we're really at about three seasons.  In the last week alone, a handful of "experts" have expressed their interest OR gone into the website and added something already and the interesting thing is, that I can see how they will be able to learn and benefit FROM EACH OTHER, and THAT is one of the main things I realized two years ago when I was thinking about how wonderful the seminars were that I was seeing by the doctors and psychologists whose videos are on Lumigrate now (8 total, 3 for $0, the others a nominal charge).  The providers are so busy all the time seeing patients and trying to maintain their health and personal life AND doing continuing education required of them, they find it difficult to 'make' seminars.  While there is nothing at this time 'like' being in the room for a live seminar, there is the benefit of at least being able to see it if it's online.  Now the problem is that people are so attached to thier computers for facebook and email and putting their new presentations together that they want to 'get away from it' and the idea of learning at Lumigrate gets put on a back burner for a while sometimes.  

One of the people who has crossed Lumigrate's 'threshold' in the last few months is a young man who caught up with me recently for a chat on facebook.  He, like so many others, are struggling getting over a bug, and it reminded me that my third day as an OT, I had to call in sick.  I ended up with bronchitis and was coughing so hard for a month that I literally popped TWO ribs loose (two weeks apart) and remember so well how horrible it was to not be 'well' (I had undiagnosed fibromyalgia) and be trying to not only 'work' but start a new career (which is a LOT of learning and stress until you get settled in).  I was hired by the largest contract rehab services company in the US, which had me start on the last day of my internships which I found out later was kind of out of compliance with rules.  I was in one facility for six months and then was just getting settled in with that staff -- which was the most verbally hostile bunch of people I have ever worked with -- when it was decided to not use a contract service to save money.  I then filled the position of an OTR that was moving to western Colorado at a really nice facility and was doing staff training at the request of staff when the wife entered the room and felt like I was making a circus of her husband, who had very progressed Parkinsons and was hitting staff -- hence their request.  Since it's best to make those kinds of people feel they are heard, they removed me from that job and I was to fill in around the Denver area which was many hours in the car and not good on my health.  Then a full time job came up but it meant I had to drive to Western Colorado and live in a motel, then drive back on weekends.  My health continued to deteriorate.  I had food allergies that I though was celiac disease at the time and they got on me about my expense account for fish, rice, vegetable dinners OR chicken at the motel with room service.  I asked them if they'd like me to return to the front range where my kitchen was.  That was the end of that.  When the manager came to town, he stayed at the really nice hotel across the road, I was at the Holiday Inn which was fine except for the night the high school kids were ALL around me for some school trip and slamming doors until wee hours when I had to get up at 5. 

After two months (which initially was going to be two WEEKS), they hired in a perment person and returned me to my old job at the ritzy place because there had been so many staff AND administration complaints about their moving me out over one family member complaint without any discussion about it with her (I heard they realized that in the evenings she'd had cocktail hour and maybe wasn't 'herself').  Even though I only had a total of a year experience with patients before starting there, I was told the administrator had said 'she was the best OT we ever had in this building'.  I couldn't have been ... but I maybe put in more time with patients and really tried innovative things.  I wasn't older and 'burned out', and I hadn't learned 'the game' that many therapists have of how to meet your productivity (required to keep your job), do a decent treatment with the patient, get your paperwork done and go home all in 8 hours.  Ironically, the ST and PT both had declinations on their Medicare paperwork and I didn't have any.  We'd all be sitting there doing our paperwork in the evening but at least I was only doing mine once.  (Many don't know we are expected to bill a % of our hours). 

Then it was announced that the government was going to what is called PPS -- Prospective Payment System.  It messed with the reimbursement SO badly, in trying to save the necessary money to keep Medicare solvent in the future, that it unemployed 50% of therapists the next year.  I saw the writing on the wall about it since I was a new therapist I'd be the first to be laid off, and went for two years and made less than I did before I had a college degree, but I was using my degree and building my professional skills.  I then returned to skilled nursingas a temporary person but by then was really not in good health -- I'd gained at least 50#, I happened to sprain my ankle early on and was ... get this ... the fill in person for an OTR who had a back injury from a patient lift. There WAS nobody else to come in to see all the patients (one OTR who is my dear friend to this day did come in as much as possible to help but she was 65 and not intending to work full time), so I worked and within a couple of months they really liked my work BUT told me to get benefits I would have to transfer to a faclity that my body was NOT up to dealing with ... lots of stairs and no carpeting of floors and I knew the OTR there called me every Sunday at 8 pm to bemoan all the problems the building had.  They were going to move her to the 'easy' building to make the contractee happee.  I had no choice.  The closet wasn't organized, their wheelchairs were old and I'd never learned wheelchair positioning and that was part of the assignment and it was a MESS.  Then they forgot to turn in something so after three months I had to work ANOTHER three months to get health insurance but when they saw I had fibromyalgia they said I was too 'high risk' to hire.  I figured they were to 'high risk to work for.  Since the other jobs that came along didn't have any better management, I eneded up five years ago right about now meeting to have my own company go into effect right after midnight of the upcoming New Year.  SO, in five years, I've enjoyed doing that and found a niche with treating patients in an outpatient setting with chronic pain and illness that led to forming an education group, and then to my making "Lumigrate" be a platform for it to serve MORE people. 

So on one of the longest nights of the year, I hope this has filled a bit of time, educated you a bit about where I have come from the last 13 years as an OT, and allow me to say that this weekend I've enjoyed so many wonderful conversations with people who are supportive of Lumigrate that it really IS a pleasure.  One of those conversations was with the Executive Producer of the Chronic Pain Educational Documentary Series and I am please to say officially, that it appears we're finding funding for the segment he is requesting.  I am please he is requesting that it be about educating people about how to become empowered about health care BEFORE they get sick.  I hope that people who are reading this will take a page from my book and realize how devastating health issues can be on your work and that certainly affects everything.  It ends up as a vicious circle. 

I'm committed to making Lumigrate be a powerful place for progressive and positive health care solutions.  I hope you are as well. 

More about our new OTR friend when we get something written up for the Forum area and about the pain series.  For now, I will close that I also enjoyed a nice conversation with Yenta here at Lumigrate AND with Lulu of 'Lulu of an  Illness', both of which I put my comments in recently.   We all look forward to your Comment about what they have written -- it's like conversations others can learn from -- OR about what I have written here.  We love your input!  Remember .. it's about YOU here at Lumigrate!  ~~ Mardy

PS -- Just as I went to post this, I saw in the Forum that there are new recipes.  From Alice.  WHO I am PLEASED to see is BACK from having a little surgery to make her better we trust and hope and it truly IS a Christmas gift for my eyes because she has been one of the many amazing people who have graced the website and our facebook page, and I really didn't think I'd see her posting until 2010. 

www.lumigrate.com/forum

(Lulu is in the Chronic Illness Forum.  Yenta is in the Spirituality Forum.  Alice (and Jen and ALL the others) are in the Nutrition Forum which has it's OWN subcategory of 'Recipes'). (Pablo Blanco has a separate area for Southern Rock 'n' Roll Recipes you'll see as well -- he and Alice are southern and man do they know food.  Jen is southwest and man does she know food and the rest of us do as well and just havent' contributed as many recipes YET.   And yes, I've currently got something goofy with the 'container' / header of Nutrition  but I hope this week someone will help me straighten it out so it looks better.  I'm in my FIRST YEAR fooling with a website... three seasons now.... and into winter we go.  GOOD cooking and LEARNING time!  Oh, and eating too.. I'm going to go grab some of the healthy slew I made (cross of stew and soup).  I can tell you now that I was doing more time with other things than cooking something worthy of a recipe so 'whew' with Alice back!