Arthritis: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier

by Shelley Peterman Schwarz

Overview

Arthritis: 300 Tips for Making Life Easier is a compendium of tips, techniques, and life-task shortcuts all learned from personal experience. Author Shelley Peterman Schwarz has lived with a chronic disease for years and as a result had to develop these creative ideas to make her life easier.

These useful tips will make all the daily tasks of household management easier, less frustrating, and more enjoyable. The book gives valuable information on organizing workdays, households, activities, chores and making homes more accessible.

Helpful for both health professionals working with people living with arthritis and also of great use for people with arthritis to learn very simple and practical tips for everyday life. The book is well organized by topic, easy to read, clearly written, and has up-to-date references which include addresses, phone, and web sites.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935281184
Publisher:	Springer Publishing Company
Publication date:	06/25/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	433 KB

About the Author

Shelley Peterman Schwarz and her husband, Dave, live in Madison, Wisconsin. At the time of her MS diagnosis in 1979, Shelley was working as a teacher of the deaf and mother to a 5- and 3-year old. She has received numerous awards and is an internationally acclaimed author, columnist, and TV and radio personality in the field of living well with a disability. Her "Making Life Easier" columns appear regularly in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and on websites.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Basic Concepts of Making Life Easier
Chapter 2. Empowering Yourself
Chapter 3. Managing Medical Issues
Chapter 4. In Your Home
Chapter 5. Managing Mealtime Madness
Chapter 6. Looking Good, Feeling Bettter
Cahpter 7. Taking Care of You
Chapter 8. Getting Out and About
Resources

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Jill Gibson, MD (Washington University Medical Center)
Description: This thorough book actually has over 400 suggestions to make life easier for patients with arthritis. The author suffers from another disabling condition, MS, and interviewed patients with arthritis and other rheumatologic diseases. The result is a list of things to try to make life easier. Some are appropriate for all people, even those without disabilities, and others, such as modifying handles and special tools, are more directly aimed at arthritis patients.
Purpose: The purpose is simply to try and improve the quality of life of patients with arthritis and other related conditions. This certainly is a worthy goal and the number of patients with these conditions is growing. The book has many worthwhile suggestions, although one concern that may prevent readers from reaching this goal is cost, as there are many recommendations to buy aid materials.
Audience: It is aimed at patients and is appropriately written. An author with severe arthritis may have focused more on the mechanics of getting around and less on general disability, but she does address mechanical issues.
Features: Items are listed in numerical format and are further subdivided by areas: basic concepts, hygiene, meals, traveling, etc. The author has a lot of good suggestions for making tasks easier such as shopping, gardening, and bathing, for example.
Assessment: This book would certainly offer a few new ideas to patients suffering with arthritis and related disabilities. The author does an excellent job of encouraging patients to become their own advocates and make the best of their situations. Particularly useful is the list of resources and shopping sites, but again these may be limited by the financial resources of some patients.

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