Ep 116 Embracing Abilities: Overcoming Obstacles at the Every1In Wellness and Abilities Fair.Part 2

 In this week's episode, we hear about the inspiration and purpose behind the  Every1In Wellness and Abilities Fair from Jory Pradjinski. The aim is simple - to foster a sense of community, create a space for face-to-face connections, and peel back the often invisible layers of stigma associated with Invisible and Visible health conditions. We'll also highlight the overlapping struggles and how understanding, hope, and sharing stories can help patients navigate their challenges.
Join us in our mission to create a more inclusive world where everyone can celebrate life and overall wellness, regardless of their walk of life.
 Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, the event had to be canceled but listen to next week's episode, where Dr. Lenz shares part of the presentation he would share at the event.

Dr. Lenz is an internist, pediatrician, lifestyle medicine physician, and clinical lipidologist interested in helping those with fibromyalgia and related problems go beyond just learning to live with it and even reverse fibromyalgia. He is also the author of the book "Conquering Your Fibromyalgia: Real Answers and Real Solutions for Real Pain. " It is also available on audiobook with Dr. Lenz as the narrator.
If you have questions, advice,  or topics you would like to have discussed on a future podcast, email Dr. Lenz at doctormichaellenz@gmail.com. You can also share a recording of your question.  You can also go to Conquerinyourfibromyalgia.com  to learn more.

Click here for the Fibromyalgia 101 link.

Click here to connect with Joy Lenz.

Chapters

• 1:43 Wellness and Abilities Fair
• 12:40 overview of the presenters
• 20:19 Connecting the Dots
• 34:07 Wrapup

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:43

Welcome back to the Conquering your Fibromyalgia podcast. This is part two of the conversation with Jory. If you haven't gotten a chance to hear the first part, please go back and listen to that and then join us for this episode. Jory will talk more about the everyone in wellness and abilities fair that's coming up. Remember that while I am a doctor, I am not your doctor. All of your signs and symptoms should be discussed with your own personal physician. And now on to this week's episode.

Speaker 2: 2:29

I like doing things that have not been done before. Apparently, I certainly have not been done before. I'm unique my name. I made it through high school in the 70s with my name. I think I'm doing pretty well when we built Hope and Still we did not find another website in the world that was doing what we were doing, so that was like, okay, that's pretty cool. Now the event that we're putting together is right along that lines. It's the way Jory rocks the world. I had a good friend of mine who had run a wellness fair in the area for several years before 2020. And he had MS and his MS was just really getting to him and in 21, he gave me the wellness fair he had gotten it. He took it over from someone else, so it was just like passing it on to the next, next holder of it. And it was a wellness fair. That was alternative treatment practitioners. They can come in, people can get the information, find out what things they might want to try before they buy, type of idea. But also in 2020, we were going to put together a wellness on an ability fast. The term is really saturated, it's not really the best one to work with, but what we ended up with in October 1st of 2020 was the very first ever everyone in event, and so it was a celebration of abilities, and if people go to our YouTube channel, they'll see the vid. There are videos on it from 2020. We had over 25 different recordings. So we had interviews with adaptive athletes. We had interviews with people with disabilities. They love to play music or is a one is a puppeteer ventral quest. I like that Dancing Pinkabrella Theater Company, who does dance with people with kids with disabilities. People with disabilities. They get them up on stage. We had interviews with tour de force, which is a partnership between Milwaukee Ballet and Children's Hospital, and they use ballet movements to help children with mobility issues to be able to get some increase in their mobility Very fascinating idea. And then we had about 40 virtual vendors from across the country. We had one from Canada, and so it was celebrating abilities and celebrating life, no matter where you're at. So me, I look at it. Let's put the two of them together because we'll see wellness fairs. They're great Good to have them. We see a disability resource event Great, good. But you know what Wellness is for everyone. It's for every walk of life. Every person knows somebody who's living with a disability, because, according to the CDC, even 22% of the American adult population has some form of a disability. They all can benefit from wellness. So it was bringing the two of them together to bring in the people who. They want to be a better athlete Maybe it's their kids want to be a better athlete, they want to have better recovery from injuries, or they just want to be able to go out hiking and be able to be comfortable, whatever it might be, just to improve their health and their quality of life. But then the people with disabilities, people who have physical challenges they also deserve to find out more about wellness. And so it's bring these things together, bring everyone together, because I have all terrier motives on this. We always hear about inclusion and we hear about diversity. Very needed Been a lot of work on that. It's come a long ways. However, when I hear those talked about and then they start talking about the groups involved, I never hear people with disabilities included in that conversation. So hear about everyone is invited to the table, but people with disabilities really aren't, and that's part of the stigma which I just I want to end at. I want that gone. We need to embrace every walk of life. So that's the other part of the event Bringing it all together, bringing everyone in seeing what we have. Our keynote speaker, jonathan Heider, is going to blow people's minds. Just go onto the website, check out this video on there. When I met you, I'm like oh my gosh, just Dr Luns would be a fantastic keynote speaker. Wait a minute, I already have one. I'm a featured speaker because what you do with fibromyalgia is, oh, it blew my mind when I met you and what it is you do and what it is you do for people. That just really hit me. I love that. But we have 10 other speakers so far covering a range of different topics. We have two that are musicians. One is an injured Army vet, jesse Freeward, and he used music. He learned to play the guitar. He worked through creative vets. He went down to Nashville so he learned how to play, learned how to write music and that's what helped to bring him forward where today he's got his wife. They just had a baby. Just really cool. Someone, kashina Arman, who is a music teacher at MATC, but like Jesse, she's going to be talking about how music has helped her and her family through traumas, and Kashina has a small band that they go around traveling. They were in Jamaica just in July down there playing. I have a whiteboard over with my list of speakers. That's what I'm looking over there. But we have this huge list of great speakers. Another one, charlie Ray, who talks about trauma and he uses what he went through to help others. His son took his own life at a young age from depression, and so Charlie has turned that around to create a program where he is able to help people break through their trauma and to be able to come back. That's anybody's walk of life. For that we have another gentleman, dave Belenda. He's going to be doing a talk on stress and burnout Not that anyone ever has had any stress or burnout to deal with, but Dave can help you with that. And then just the vendors getting all the vendors in there Just create something new, work on getting rid of the stigmas and just helping everyone improve the quality of your life and in turn help the community improve its quality of life, because who doesn't want a stronger community?

Speaker 1: 10:23

Where is it going to be and when is it going to be? The event is going to be Saturday.

Speaker 2: 10:27

September 30th from 9am to 5pm at the Baird Center, formerly known as the Wisconsin Center. So it's on 4th in Wisconsin Avenue and they can get their tickets through our website. Every the number one in dot com. They can get tickets through our page on Eventbrite. They can go to our Facebook event page on there as well and get their tickets. Anyone who is listening to this podcast and they want to tick it, if they use discount code H-O-P-E all capital letters, h-o-p-e you know, listen to this podcast, that will get them a free ticket. And now they're going to be $15 at the door, but that's my gift to you and your listeners.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Well, thanks for your time. And for those who can't make it live in person because they're on a different continent or different part of the country, and it's getting here is a challenge what is going to be available for watching online? That?

Speaker 2: 11:52

is going to be a platform called Event Hub. That is in the process. That'll get live and then links off of our websites a couple of weeks before the events. By the time they're listening to this, that'll all be understood and go to it again. Go to everyoneincom and there'll be a link on there to go to our virtual website. So the virtual website. They will be able to see a layout of the event floor and they'll see all of the different vendors that are there in person and so they can still click on it. They can still check on it and say I want to see what is this chiropractor have, what is this person who does music therapy, and find out more about what it is they have to offer. And now people are thinking, well, yeah, but Jory, that's in Milwaukee, I live in Tennessee, I live in Japan, wherever it might be. But if you get the information and then you can learn and figure out who you want to then find locally Because you're like, oh, hey, music therapy for kids, I'll go look now locally because I'll probably find somebody who can do music therapy. And it's also interesting because we have one virtual vendor from New Zealand and she does breath work and then she also started a program where they use poetry for people with chronic pain, chronic diseases and disabilities. They use poetry to talk about their situation and she gets people from around the country, around the world, I should say, doing that. So we're going to have a number of different vendors where I'm working on trying to get vendors who, like Katie from New Zealand, what she does can be done virtually. So that's a lot of what I want to have for virtual vendors, someone who they can interact with. Another lady who works with trauma, helping people get through traumas. She's here in the Milwaukee area but she can do that work virtually.

Speaker 1: 15:32

It sounds like a lot of great speakers. I'm excited to get a chance to speak there and actually more excited to get a chance to meet other speakers. There's a lot of podcast ideas just talking not listening to the VISTA that you have and getting a chance to connect professionally, but actually really interested in getting a chance to meet people If you are a listener of the podcast and you want to meet me in person and you just may be a great opportunity to do that. So, if you are, I'd love to see you down there and I'd love to hear that you are a listener and getting to see people face to face in person. It's exciting and I like the looking at multiple ways of trying to get better. This is a multi-pronged approach. There's multiple ways to try to incorporate and you may not have a real high talent in music, but it might be in a different kind of art, it might be in poetry and Margaret Mitchell, who we talked about earlier, who had gone through back surgery that failed. One of the only ways she actually got relief from what now we call fibromyalgia was by actually writing Gone with the Wind. Oh, that's okay, and so a lot of these are themes that are going back If you haven't gotten a chance to listen to the six-part series I did this summer on Neurostenia. The doctors back between 1869 and 1920s were incorporating a lot of these things but they stopped using the word Neurostenia which is that umbrella term for fibromyalgia and other invisible illnesses, because it didn't fall under the medical model and they would rather spend time helping people. And imagine you're a doctor and now the development of antibiotics, reliable anesthesia, operation, pain medications for surgery and more just general medications that can classically treat from the classic medical model where you can rescue people, and development of immunizations and all of those that are acute that we don't see as much of acute issues anymore that are deadly because we can rescue people but now we're left with the chronic issues. It's so interesting when you look back these stories and the cases and these were very compassionate doctors back then who really took a lot of time working with them. They had different therapists. There was some, if you wanna call it reframing in how you look at something taking somebody who's bed bound, who doesn't feel like they can do, and then having a nurse with you 24, seven to try to gradually get you to get out of bed, move, walk, et cetera in a drawn out way, but having that therapy, that hand holding, and so it'll be great. And we talk about invisible disabilities or challenges. And we talk about visible disabilities and challenges because we can see somebody who lost a leg or his hand, had amputation of some kind. But even in people who have visible challenges, they often are struggling with invisible challenges on top of the visible, and these are all part of this group and that you're working to help offer some hope and listening ear and removing the stigma. I know that was one of them. Strong message is trying to remove the stigma that we can be connected. There are so many other overlapping struggles that we've have been discovering with chronic health, chronic pain issues, and it's fascinating because this understanding is changing pretty quickly. Now how many doctors are keeping up the data on this? Not so much because we are still in that more medical model and I've had a number of patients, whether who. She came to me. A recent patient came to me and she said a friend said you should see Dr Lenz, he's just a nice doctor, didn't know anything else about me, but since about 2008 she was told she had chronic Lyme. She had been to many medical doctors and dismissed that there was nothing wrong. They did all of the tests. And when you have continued complaints, then the shift comes towards blaming the patient, in a sense. Whether it's in it is, why are you here? I don't know what to do. You're making me feel uncomfortable and can you just not complain? What we're understanding with chronic Lyme that really overlaps with fibromyalgia related issues. There's a, just like you can get long haul COVID, you can have an acute Lyme infection that gets treated, but there are persistent symptoms and similar to long haul COVID. When somebody had influenza 100 plus years ago, they would get some of these chronic symptoms. So we see was talking for several minutes timidly and I said I just want you to know I take care of a lot of patients like you. That's okay, you can continue to talk about this and, just so you know, I've written a book about these things. I know a lot of what you're going through and I've helped a lot of people get through these. And then she had some tears of hope, I think, and reframing things and it turned out and we're just still early in this process of we can't solve all of it, what's been going on for 15 plus years in one visit. But oh, so you're not going to think that I'm a difficult patient and often where sometimes the alternative medicine world was giving her a diagnosis that she had chronic Lyme and I did a whole episode series on that last fall. You can listen to it if you haven't, but nobody else is going to go off for any explanation and any hope. The problem was, after many years of just trying different antibiotics and okay, that doesn't work, try a different antibiotic or maybe we have to do IV. She's like maybe this isn't the answer, maybe there's something else, but who else is going to give me an answer? And so now we get a chance to talk about those things and any concerns. Oh no, just going off to my junior year in college, I'm like, okay, cool. And then I just reviewing the problem list in past medical history, that's in the chart and I go, this says dysmenorrhea, painful periods in your problem list. Sometimes people have stuff listed in a problem list and it's old. They had a sore throat. It says that's likely old or it might be reflux if you hadn't mentioned it once. But I said, is that still active? She's like, yeah, I said so from zero, no pain at all to 10 being very painful. How painful are your periods? And she started to get teary. She said excruciating. For two days I can't go to class, oh my gosh. And I said a lot of people who have excruciating periods hurt in other places in their body. I'm just curious if you heard anywhere else. And then she got more teary and she said to get neck pain, my back hurts, my arms tingle, my jaw hurts, my gut hurts, my legs hurt. I heard everywhere. I'm run down and I feel terrible and tears were coming as she's sharing this and I said well, why didn't you tell me when I asked if you any concerns? I've been seeing doctors since I was a kid. They've never been able to help me. My mom said you're fine. The pediatrician said I don't know what to do for you. Go see the OBGYN. The OBGYN said all I can do is give you different hormones. This story likely resonates with many of you who are listening. Fibromyalgia is and chronic pain and offering some hope, and I often say to my patients that this is bittersweet, you're gonna improve. I can't control if somebody's spouse doesn't believe in this, doesn't give them support, doesn't understand that sleep and exercise and cleaning up the house and do cluttering and other things are important and that getting their children treated for their mental health is important and others it can do. Not ignoring that, making it Trump, I can't control that, but I say you know, within reason we can help you get better. The bitter part is to how come Nobody else that I've seen all of these other doctors and you and one visit connected all of these dots and I'm a little bitter. It it seems so simple that you are Connecting these things. Why isn't anybody else doing it? And yet you can't go back in time and that's why sharing these stories and I look back in medicine there's things that they didn't have a hundred years ago and there's gonna be things a hundred years from now that we're doing. They're gonna be looked at now but hopefully, I think, at a minimum. When you go to a fair like this, there's a strong emotions. I Would imagine that many people listening have tears because of a validation that other people have been through things and that's okay, that you're not alone. I and a lighthearted being a little sense of humor I sometimes tell my patients you know, you're not that special after I Meaning, and of course they smile. No other context outside, of getting a chance to know that I care deeply about people who are going through struggles like this, but to say You're not that special because there's other people going through this, and part of the podcast is we share stories of Listeners and people like yourself who may not be my patients or patients who've been through this, because hearing stories and and that people can improve and get Better and get through this and that they're not alone, and also hearing from experts on helping understand Struggles that exist in many people and that may apply to an individual and go, that's insightful. So, again, very nice to have you Putting this on. You look at a mission. Is there something inside you beyond that you want to do this? Where would you say this comes from?

Speaker 2: 27:17

Yeah, it is from my faith and, again, it wasn't something that was really drummed into us as kids. But I Know that when I had problems, and still every time, and doesn't matter what it is, if I'm facing something, that's okay. I'm looking out for who I know is up there. Mm-hmm, it's interesting to you. Just said that. I just remembered After every one of my surgeries that, wake up, the first thing I did was make sure my toes wiggled Okay, the legs still work, and after that I would say, okay, god, what is it you want me to be doing differently? I Just remembered that and I think the other thing is just doing for others what I wasn't able to find, what I didn't receive, and I've gone through these changes for a reason. I've been given a very big mouth for a reason, and a lot of what you were just talking about there and it hit me. One thing I definitely want to mention is I always talk about improving the quality of your life Because there's no guarantees, there's nothing, there's no magic bullet that we're going to take your pain away. I actually just started going and getting some more dry needling done because my back has been giving me some problems, so you're not going to take your pain away, but improving in quality of your life. And yes, maybe somebody isn't able to do sports, but we're going to have an equestrian therapist there. Music therapy, we're going to have art therapy. So it is all of these, it's finding what is inside that moves them. We're trying to get a horticultural therapist.

Speaker 1: 29:13

I would guess that many people are naturally in that and it's a lot of these keen into activities they're doing that they don't even know were therapies. And for the interview I just did with Dale Rockle, who's from the UK, I said what do you notice when you're doing photography and out on your walk and looking about getting the right angle and the pictures? What do you notice about your fibromyalgia? I don't really notice it. Then, what do you notice when you're composing music and playing music? I guess I don't notice it as much, but I know when I come back from the walk and I come inside, I know I'm going to feel it, but, as he said, I realize I'm going to be in pain regardless. If I sit inside all day, I'm going to be in pain, and so one of the things that I'm learning is doing this podcast and hearing people's stories and continuing to investigate and understand. The most complex created thing in the universe is actually the human brain, when we can get into that creative mode that gives us purpose and what we're supposed to be doing. So I think locking into doing that as oh now, in a perfect world, if that somehow matched up with a career that was in that direction and being able to tune into that. That's really helpful. Another observation I've learned over the years is these therapies were routinely used and they don't know what you need and there isn't a stress point until they are removed. So people don't know they need 10 to 20,000 steps a day until they throw out their disc in their back and they suddenly didn't know, because back then you weren't tracking your steps, but for sure you might have been. I was on my feet all the time. I was a go kind of guy, getting 10 to 20,000 steps every day and never sat down. I was always busy and oh, did you know? That's part of it, oh yeah. But now when I walk 5,000 steps I hurt so much more, I know, but you're doing 500. You increase by 10 times. You used to be able to do more. You got to gradually build up and have to do that in a way. And I found out from a patient of mine that and that was from Adam who we were talking about, chronic Lyme, who was on the podcast a year ago. I didn't realize he was huge into music and even toured around the country, played the guitar and wrote songs, and then stress happened in his life in a variety of ways, that, looking back, that music wasn't just a small part, but it was a huge part. And what was he doing? Recording songs, producing sound. As Dale Rock Elf says, the vibrations on an acoustic have a vibe, a physical vibe that's different than the electric and so creating that you're recognizing, oh, people with chronic pain need to harness that, need to get into that creative mode as therapy and there's different avenues and it sounds like at the wellness fair there are many different options and you were talking about horticulturalists. Many people go. Oh, I love being outside and just planting and it's beauty and creating and doing things. But we only get seven months of that. What do I do in the other five months? I know it's so boring to walk on the treadmill and lift weights and you're in Wisconsin and you don't get the snowboard somewhere else and all of this. But being connected and part of lifestyle medicine that I'm part of is that social connection, being connected to other people, and so that's so powerful and so all the people getting a chance to get connected, I'd love to see them and you get a chance in seeing people in person after you. Put all that together is exciting. So any final thoughts that you have?

Speaker 2: 33:52

Oh my gosh, you just like totally opened my mind at a lot of things. I always tell people I have squirrels because I can hear something in Austin. It just opens all kinds of doors to me because I'm being guided in those directions. I don't know how to follow up with what you said. Oh, I did want to mention something, yes, about what it is that we can do, no matter where we are. I have a very good friend who's a business partner now. He was born with cerebral palsy and it affects his eyes and he had done a radio program before COVID on disability issues very small radio station, but we are now getting his internet radio station set up. So ADA Talks is his internet radio station and so we're going to be building out that for programming on there. Here. It is this amazing young man who has cerebral palsy and he's oh, I always wanted to get in the radio. So it really is what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve and we just have to help to get that recognized and allow people to patch Adam's movie. I love that movie, but one of the things with Andrew is like what are you like? What stirs? I forget exactly how it's said, but it's what makes you happy, what is in there and it's okay to say. And then it's okay, lynn, it's. What can we do with it? Make it a hobby, it's great. If you make it in something more than that, okay cool. But if you end up with a hobby that just gives you passion, that works. And remember, folks, if you want your tickets capital H-O-P-E, all capital letters you get a free ticket.

Speaker 1: 35:55

Awesome, so excited to share that with people and getting a chance to be connected with them, and we can definitely share that link. I really hope to see you there. If you can't try to connect online, try to connect online.