As you know I am a pharmacist. I work in a psychiatric specialty pharmacy and my primary job is to check bubble packs, prescriptions and bulk medications filled by our technicians. We have a bar code system that helps ensure accuracy, which is of utmost importance. I provide the last check before the item is dispensed and I am all about Best Practices.
What is Best Practices you may ask. A great question. Best practices are simply the best process to do things. They have been worked out through trial and error, and are found to be the most accurate and efficient way to proceed to deliver a pharmaceutically elegant product and/or service.
So I was having a friendly chit-chat the other day with someone from my Pilates class. We were comparing how our bodies were feeling after the suspension of our class for many weeks. She seemed to be doing whole lot better than I was.
Well, I then shared how I’ve been doing a lot of weeding in my garden and confessed I wasn’t using RA Best Practices. I was doing way to much bending over and not enough sitting on my padded gardening mat.
Yes! That is the exact terminology I used to describe my method of gardening. RA Best Practices.
So what specifically is an RA Best Practice?
It is, of course, the best process to do things since my rheumatoid arthritis (RA) diagnosis. The process has been worked out through trial and error to be the most accurate and efficient way to prevent further stress and irritation on my joints.
Just to let you know the process may or may not be the most efficient way of doing something literally, but in the end it is most efficient to preserve my joints.
Let me explain. When doing a task going up and down stairs, I will be sure to do so by consolidating all I need to do upstairs before going downstairs to limit having to use the steps more often. Using the stairs too much tends to stress my joints.
But, as I do tasks on one floor I am not at all efficient with my tasks, intentionally. I want to stretch and move around and that helps me to do so.
Yes, it seems a bit strange, but it makes sense to me and my body feels and moves so much better when I stretch it and keep on moving.
My family has learned not even to ask what I’m up to because of my unique and nonconventional approach to living! It is my RA Best Practices!
That is what I am sharing with you on this blog. The things I have learned and discovered to help manage my RA. And also to preserve what is functioning and working well!
And that is using Arthritis Wisdom!
XXOO Cathy
photo credit: Benjamin Childs from Unsplash
