Living Well With Chronic Pain

Facts about pain

• Pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.
• Pain is cited as the most common reason Americans access the health care system. It is a leading cause of disability and it is a major contributor to health care costs.
• According to the National Center for Health Statistics (2006), approximately 76.2 million, one in every four Americans, have suffered from pain that lasts longer than 24 hours and millions more suffer from acute pain.
• Chronic pain is the most common cause of long-term disability.
• Pain can be a chronic disease, a barrier to cancer treatment, and can occur alongside other diseases and conditions (e.g. depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury).
• Behavioral interventions for pain also demonstrate promise for providing pain relief either in conjunction with or in lieu of drug interventions. For example, NIH-supported research has demonstrated that individualized pain management programs may reduce cancer pain for some patients.

About the Facilitator

Group Facilitator Shirley Foerster is known to friends and family alike as our very own “Bionic Woman”!  Shirley has beautifully and bravely managed her own health while having six lower body joint replacements!  She developed Rheumatoid Arthritis at age 27, and has over and over again proven her experiential empathy for others as she herself continues to thrive in spite of living with the Rheumatoid for forty-eight years.  Shirley Lives Well with Chronic Pain, and wants you to be able to do the same.  She is a Registered Nurse with a B.S. in Behavioral Science.  She also worked many years in the hospice field, and she has facilitated many groups related to loss and the need to persevere in transforming our lives.  Shirley is a certified Life Coach and believes in a holistic approach to living.   Come and join Shirley as she shares her wealth of experience and empathy:  come and learn to Live Well with Chronic Pain! 

 

About the Group

Be a part of the 8 week Education/Support Group called Living Well with Chronic Pain!  This group uses The Chronic Illness Workbook by Patricia Fennell, MSW.  The group is a safe environment in which to learn about the 4 phases of chronic illness:

Phase 1:  Crisis
Goal:  Contain the crisis
Outcome:  Learn to allow your suffering.

Phase 2:  Stabilization
Goal:  Stabilize and begin restructuring your life
Outcome:  Learn to regard your suffering with compassion.

Phase 3:  Resolution
Goal:  Maintain insight, develop meaning, construct a new self.
Outcome:  Learn to meet your suffering with respect.

Phase 4:  Integration
Goal:  Integrate your illness into a whole and meaningful life.
Outcome:  Learn to integrate your suffering into a whole life.

 

In your group, you will develop practical strategies for living the journey of chronic illness, reduce your fear and pain, recreate a new self, and arrive at a life that gives satisfaction and purpose!  You will learn there is hope to live holistically and well!  You will learn to develop loving self-care: we all need it!!!

 

Your group will be a Closed Group (NO Walk-ins).  Those attending must have a previous meeting with the facilitator. 

 

Commit to attending and participating , and you will learn to ask What is the WISE thing for me to do? and  HOW can I do it?

We know that Hope is easily lost with chronicity and pain.

 

So, help us redefine HOPE!

How Other Possibilities Exist!

Help Other Possibilities Emerge!

Help Other’s Possibilities Emerge!

Have Optimum Possible Experiences!

 

This group is for you. Join Ms. Shirley and new friends on your journey to Living Well with Chronic Pain.