Neuro Note 4

Stress: It's Bad for MS

Kathy. (2019, Aug. 16). Stress: It's Bad for MS. Retrieved from https://fumsnow.com/stress-its-bad-for-ms

I chose to do the blog post of Kathy with MS for this neuro note to dive into the life of someone experiencing it first-hand. It is interesting to see the many ways people adapt to living with this autoimmune disorder and the different ways they handle it.

Kathy, a mother of 2, is extremely overwhelmed with moving her oldest daughter to college and planning a sweet 16 birthday party for her youngest daughter. She is tired, worn out, and beating herself up because she cannot get everything done without another task piling up on her to-do list. Between moving, the party, her messy house, her job, and pilled up bills she has a constant "OMG I'm behind and I'll never catch up and I suck" thought going through her mind. With this much stress and a MS diagnosis, there's no surprise she woke up early one morning with her heart beating out of her chest, nausea, fatigue and pain with her to-do list running through her head. She is an advocate for "me time", rest, and stillness, but she can't seem to find it these days. She tries to push through but knows she will pay for it later.

As discussed in class, Kathy would be a good client to implement the energy conservation model on. Through this method, Kathy could work on prioritizing and distributing tasks that could be broken up and made easier by doing the heavier, work-intensive tasks first followed by the not-so-strenuous tasks. She could plan her day ahead of time, reminding herself she only has so much energy for one day. She can schedule in breaks where needed to help monitor her stress and gather her thoughts on what task she will complete next. Kathy could also designate an area in her home to place all materials she will be using on that specific day to keep from tiring so easily. Using this technique will allow her to be more efficient and effective in getting her to-do lists of tasks done.