Friends,
Nutrition program last Wednesday
Alison Tierney with Wholesome LLC did a really interesting and helpful presentation on supplements. Which ones do we need as we live with MS and how do we know if we need them based on research and science?
Alison shared her presentation with us and some other useful guides that she prepared for us. You can download them with the links below
July 2023, PDF of Slides – Labs & Supplementation
Wholesome LLC, Blood Test Guide
Wholesome LLC, Supplement Guide
Great job Alison and thanks for putting this presentation together for us and doing such a nice job of presenting it. Well done!
Alison will be back September 6th for another session on nutrition.
My talk last week – What’s next?
As we look back on where we came from, who we are serving, how it’s been rewarding; I keep saying this is not my plan. God is bringing us all together for much greater reasons than my simple little mind can visualize. I give thanks to God and to everyone who is helping us live and support our mission.
With that being said, we want to continue to do what we’re being called to do. Each person is helping in their own way. Our friends with MS are helping by showing up each each week, sharing their journey of living with MS and making the best of it. Our many volunteers are helping in so many different ways. We are so blessed! All the people who support us in our communities and through events and donations are helping us make this mission possible. The families, friends and caregivers of our friends with MS are helping all of us. While remaining humble, we have a lot going on that we should be proud of and thankful for. I know I am.
Larry made a nice presentaion outlining all we have going on. I went through Larry’s diagrams and spoke to the volunteer opportunities of each area. We have lots of opportunities to volunteer whether it be directly with our friends with MS or behind the scenes.
As I went through the opportunities, I asked people to let me know where they might be interested in helping out. We are committed to keeping our mission free for people with MS. We also want to keep growing and serving more people with more services. With that, comes more opportunities for volunteers. Please let me know if you know someone willing to help or if you are willing to help in any way. We really like retired people who are looking to do something significant with their time as well as everyone else that volunteers. Our volunteers are truly amazing!
As we go forward, I would like to see us engage in research at a higher level and become a research accelerator group. We all have the MS science project in our body. We know from experience there is a lot we can do for ourselves to live a good, active and purposeful life with MS. We are a sharing community willing to share all we learn and what is working well for us. I’m confident we can even come up with some research initiatives that will prove to be beneficial to all of us living with MS and newly diagnosed people living with MS. We all know we need more research, let’s engage in it and initiate it where we see it being beneficial.
Some exciting news! Through the years, we have made an impact on some of the students that have come in and worked with us on a volunteer basis. I’ve always said, I hope we influence some of the students at a level they would like to pursue a career working with people with MS. Apparently, we have influenced one particular student, Kate Born from Marquette University. Kate will have her PHD in exercise science and rehabilitation in December.
Kate has presented at our open house and did an amazing educational presentation on exercise several weeks ago. She has a close relationship with Dr Ng at Marquette University who has done many studies with people with MS. Dr Ng is a great guy for Kate to learn from.
Kate came to me a few weeks ago and shared her passion for our group. She expressed an interest in pursuing her career after graduation with us at MS-Just Keep Moving, Inc. WOW! That’s quite the opportunity for us. We kicked around a lot of ideas on how we can make this work; keeping in mind it not only needs to be good for us but also for Kate and her family as we go forward. We realize funding this initiative would be different for us but we didn’t want money to be a reason to say no. We feel we have some good ideas to get Kate started and are really excited to have her join us. I’m confident we all will benefit by having Kate join us in many ways.
Kate will be starting on a part time basis while she finishes school and will join us full time after she graduates in December. She will be with us on Wednesdays and Fridays and will be starting to develop personal training programs for our friends with MS based on their level of abilities. We all know MS is different for each of us. We started a list of people that would like a personal plan last Friday. If you’d like to work with Kate and have her help develop a personal training plan for you, please let Kate know when you see her Wednesday or Friday.
When Kate is able to join us full time after she graduates, she will be even more available for our friends with MS. If you look back to the time you were diagnosed with MS; wouldn’t you have loved to have a place like MS-Just Keep Moving, Inc. along with all the friends with MS, knowledge and experience we have within our community to go to? I know I would have liked that, being diagnosed was a very scary time for me. I’m confident Kate will be able to add a lot of value to all of us including the newly diagnosed as we continue to share our journey of living with MS together. Who knows “What’s Next?” I may not know, but I certainly trust and have faith it will be good. I’m excited!
Let’s all welcome Kate to MS-Just Keep Moving, Inc. WELCOME KATE!
Facebook Fund Raising
Ricky volunteered to help people with Facebook Fundraising. Here’s a message from Ricky:
A few of us have recently raised over $2,000 on our birthdays through Facebook to support MS-Just Keep Moving, Inc! It’s an easy way to raise money and Facebook does most of the work and they even pay for the fees. If you are on Facebook and would like to raise money on your birthday and need help setting it up; talk to Ricky at the gym or contact him at 414-759-8169 or openlotusyoga@yahoo.com.
Thanks for offering to this for us Ricky! Just think what this could amount to if more people engaged in it? A huge thank you goes out to all who have already…thank you!
A call for event planning volunteers
We have four big events coming up over the next few months. We could use some help planning for them. If you’re willing and interested in helping to plan for any of these events, please let me know.
- MS Bike ride for the National MS Society – August 4th and 5th
- Our Day of Endurance – August 26th
- Our Caregivers Retreat – September 23rd
- MS-Just Keep Moving Open House – November
Friday Morning Bike Ride
Last week was questionable with the rain. Will we ride or not? At 6:00am we had a beautiful rainbow to start our ride.
The pictures don’t do it justice. It was really vibrant.
It rained for a little while on our 6:00 loop but was all done by our 7:00 ride.
We have a lot of construction in the neighborhoods around the park this year. Last week we found some nice roads even though we had to ride the same roads a couple times. We ended up riding 13 miles and were still back on time. It turned out to be a really nice ride.
Let’s leave the parking lot a little earlier again this week. Come a little early so you can get your bike out of your car and be ready to ride as close to 7:00 as possible. We’ll ride until about 8:45. Let’s ride and have some fun!
We’ll be meeting Friday morning at 7:00am at Nettesheim Park in Pewaukee. It’s on the SE corner of Hwy SS and Oak Street. The GPS address is: N26W27495 Prospect Ave, Pewaukee, WI 53072.
Again, for those who wish you could join us but can’t; please know we have you in our hearts on these rides. We’re riding with you and for you. I hope you too can join us someday. We really need to get this MS thing figured out. Let’s keep working on it together.
Educational Sessions
Friday, July 28th – Tom Holtackers will have a second session on emotional health as we live with MS. We can all use a little help with learning how to deal with living with MS…I know I can. It’s not easy to live with. We need to make the best of it.
Friday, August 11th – Peixun Zheng from University of Illinois – Chicago will be doing a presentation on a study that was funded by the National MS Society. It will be on Healthy Aging Through Lifestyle with MS. I hope you will join us and I hope some of our local friends from the National MS Society will join us for this presentation as well. It’s good to see our fundraising efforts for the National MS Society being put to good use.
Friday, August 25th – To be determined
Future topics could include: emotional health, nutrition, yoga, tai chi, wellness topics, safe use of gym equipment for your body, best exercise for you and more. What topics would you like to see? Please let Joan, Traci, Ricky or Dan know
MS Bike Ride – August 5th and 6th
This is coming right up…exciting! If you want to ride and haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time to do so. You’re welcome to sign up on our Peppy Pedaler’s team. Our team continues to grow each week. We now have 50 people signed up on our team and 6 of these 50 are people living with MS. We’ll have fun on this ride!
Here’s the link to sign up on our Peppy Pedaer’s Team https://mssociety.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&teamID=33945
If you’d be willing to support me on this ride by making a donation to the National MS Society, you can do this on my personal page. Here’s the link…thank you in advance for your support! https://mssociety.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=232246
It’s critical we continue to support the National MS Society and all the research and programs they fund. Thanks to all who have supported us in the past. I’m proud and thankful to say that our Peppy Pedaler’s team has already raised over $1,000,000.00. Yes, that’s over one million dollars as of last year. Thank you for your support!
We need to continue to support research so that perhaps one day, we’ll have more answers for MS. These answers are going to come from research. The National MS Society funds the research we need. Let’s do our part by supporting the National MS Society.
Day of Endurance Journey – Progress – Let’s share!
When? August 26, 2023
Where? Naga-Waukee Park, Delafield, WI
What? Let’s do what we can. If you haven’t decided what you’re going to do yet, I encourage you to do something. Hopefully, next year, you’ll be able to do more than this year. We will have people swimming, biking, running, walking, rolling in wheelchairs and anything else they can do. We also need lots of cheerleaders and volunteers. Please engage and help make it a fun and inspirational event.
Why? To build friendships and exercise into our lifestyle year around and stay ahead of our MS the best we can. Personally, I know I need something BIG on my calendar to keep me motivated and to give me daily reasons to be with friends and exercise.
If there’s an event I would like to see grow year after year, it would be our “Day of Endurance”. It’s a little strange to say that because we haven’t even done it yet and there’s not another event out there anything like it. Let’s create it!
Please share your progress by recording it on the board at the gym. We have some amazing and inspirational progress being made physically along with mentally and emotionally.
Each two-week period, let’s record our longest distance or time of each event we’re working toward for the “Day of Endurance”. Along with that, let’s share a few words about how we felt after our long event for the two-week period leading up to the day of endurance on August 26th. That’s it!
Each two-week period, let’s try to do just a little more than the last two-week period and record (share) it again.
Let’s enjoy our journey…together!
Let’s get together!
We’ll be getting together from 9:00am – noon on Wednesday and Friday mornings at the gym. I hope you’ll join us!
Wisconsin Metal Parts – Westmound Building
MS-Just Keep Moving, Inc.
W228N791 Westmound Drive
Waukesha, WI 53186
Prayer Group We’ll be having our prayer group Wednesday @ 11:00am.
I just love the way we share, pray and laugh together while we witness prayers being answered weekly. It’s truly amazing!
Thanks goes to God and to everyone that joins us. Let’s get together to share, listen, talk, give thanks, and pray however God leads us.
MS Just Keep Caring – Our Caregivers support group will be the first and third Friday of each month from 10:00 – 10:30am. The next one will be this Friday, July 21st. If you’re a caregiver of someone you love with MS, please join us and share your experience of caring for your loved one. This has been very helpful for many. Thanks to all who participate!
Our Facebook page is private. That means you’ll need to join if you want access to all our fun and progress. We’re now up to 401 members. That’s awesome! https://www.facebook.com/groups/2639832389489709
Our Facebook page is very active and fun. Lots of people are doing more and sharing their journey on Facebook. Feel free to join, post and share your experiences and comments.
There were some awesome pictures, videos and comments shared again this past week. Thank you to all who are sharing!
Thai Massage with Ricky Heldt
Ricky will be here Wednesday and Friday doing Thai Massage.
Many continue making great progress with chronic pain relief, range of motion, walking better and a new sense of hope when Ricky works with them. Please keep in mind that consistency is key. Not only with Ricky…with exercise too. We need consistency to realize the benefits long term. We want you to have long term benefits and relief.
Ricky has a sign up board based on first come first serve. You can pick the time slot that works for you. I highly encourage you to take advantage of Ricky’s Thai Massages each day and sign up for your time slot as soon as you get there.
Reiki with Linda Linda will be here on Fridays doing Reiki. Many people say Linda’s Reiki work is “magical”. We’re thankful for Linda sharing her gifts and talents to us. Feel free to let Linda know you’d like to do Reiki with her. She also has a sign up sheet.
Inspirational Humor with Adam Wollert
We’ll be having our inspirational humor zoom call with Adam again next Tuesday. Adam is a gift to all of us. Thanks to all who joined us today!
Please join us if you can.
Tuesdays @ 1:30PM
Here’s the link to join us…I hope you do!
Join Zoom Meeting with this link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9431389152?pwd=bWlYbFNaazVnM1M1cWxWMitlODdXUT09
Meeting ID: 943 138 9152
Passcode: 3qP2hu
Phone: 1-312-626-6799
Let’s reach out
I encourage you to share a smile and encouragement with someone. Perhaps you could call someone that you have not talked with for a while just to say hi and see how they are doing. We all could use a little extra love and encouragement.
MS is tough. Let us have faith, remain calm, be flexible, help each other and learn as much as we can about the challenges of each day as we make good choices.
Let’s keep moving and smiling 😊
In God We Trust…we are in good hands.
Dan
P.S. This past week, we had some turkeys stop by for a picnic. Unfortunately, they didn’t stick around long enough for me to bring them some food.
We also had a little bunny out there eating some clover
I saw a baby robin in a tree so I went in and got my camera. It was just learning to fly.
The bees are busy this time of the year
It’s fun to take pictures of weeds at sunset
This is the time of the year that the wildflowers are in full bloom. Do wildflowers give thanks to God? It sure looks like this one does. God’s beauty in nature.
Sometimes I get pictures of birds that I don’t know what they are. When this happens, I send them to my friend Ray and he lets me know what they are. Here’s a pair of Cedar Waxwings that I took Monday evening at sunset. Thanks Ray! The orange sunset shining on them made them look orange.
This is a boardwalk in Simmons Woods Park in Pewaukee. If you just want to sit and enjoy nature, you can do that.
For those who can’t get out and enjoy nature due your challenges with MS…my heart is with you. You are with me every time I’m out there. I enjoy being out there and I also enjoy sharing with you. I know how hard it is not to be able to get out and enjoy nature. Let’s enjoy nature and God’s beauty together this way.