Finding Your Own Solutions

Not surprisingly, it's on the home front that most people with arthritis first encounter difficulties, since most living spaces aren't designed with disabilities in mind. An occupational therapist (OT) can provide many different ready-made solutions to daily-living problems; check to see what occupational therapy services are available in your community.

If there's any small comfort in coping with arthritis, it's that you're not alone: Millions of Canadians have come to terms with arthritis pain and disability and have used their hard-earned experience to improve their quality of life. The point is, you don't have to re-invent the wheel - draw on their experience. Some of it has been presented within this Web site.

Where there don't appear to be any ready-made solutions to a particular problem, invent one. Here's a two-step approach you might find helpful.

Let's say you've identified grocery shopping as a task you find very difficult. But what's the real problem? 'Going grocery shopping' is a relatively general statement about an activity that's made up of many smaller tasks. You need to focus right in on what those elements are that make grocery shopping difficult.

If shopping is too painful, where does it hurt and why? If shopping is too tiring, is there a specific task that drains your energy - carrying the groceries from the car to the kitchen, perhaps? After going through all the different steps involved in grocery shopping - making a list, getting dressed, getting in the car, parking the car, selecting the groceries from the shelf, and so on - you may realize that the real difficulty is getting out of the car; it's a struggle that's very hard on your hips and knees, which wears you out before you even get into the store.

Once you've identified the problem, you're half-way to solving it. Next, with family members or friends (or with your ASMP classmates), start jotting down possible solutions - whatever occurs to the group, no matter how farfetched - until you have a list of possible options and can't think of any more.

For grocery shopping, your list might include having your groceries delivered, asking for a helping hand from the driver, placing a slippery cloth over the upholstered carseat to make sliding your hips and legs out easier, taking pain medication before you go shopping, or parking just a bit out from the curb.

Select the options that you think best solve your problem. In the grocery-shopping example, let's say you decide that placing a slippery cloth on the car seat will ease you in and out of the car. Also, you realize that, by parking a bit out from the curb, it effectively makes the seat higher (the distance from the street surface to the top of the sidewalk), which means you'll need less effort to launch yourself to a standing position. These are the kind of solutions that seem worth trying. And don't give up: If your first solution doesn't work, pick another one from your list, or start the whole process over again.

Identifying problems, brainstorming ideas, selecting solutions - together these skills comprise a powerful battering ram for knocking down barriers.

This page was last reviewed/updated on : 11/25/2008