The vision of Reinvent Chronic is that a person’s identity is far more than a chronic illness.
It sounds so positive, inspirational, and just like something you’d read on a cat poster.
The mission of Reinvent Chronic is to offer advocacy, education, and support to those with chronic illnesses.
That’s the pretty version of the mission. The other two drafts were:
- Making mistakes so you don’t have to.
- Hacking through life with a chronic illness.
The first one was clear and unfortunately accurate. I gave it serious consideration.
But what does hacking through life mean?
Hacking through life means:
- Getting through each day
- Finding a more practical way to accomplish life tasks
- Setting and achieving reasonable goals
- Reducing risks
- Increasing productivity
- Helping you live a better life
I was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in 2002. Now, my disease is progressive. I’ve gone from walking everywhere to struggling with a rolling walker. My left side and my bladder are weak. In other words, I’ve had to adapt. I hack.
Hacks can help you…
- Organize your information so that you can best access what you need, whether it’s on a daily basis or longer term.
- Manage your health better.
- Help you complete daily tasks more easily.
- Save yourself time and energy.
Who launches a blog but then vanishes for weeks? That would be me. I have a good reason, not to be confused with the Lame Reasons My Sons Try To Get By Me. During the past two months, I’ve spent so much time gathering information that I haven’t had time to do much else, including posting here. I’ll give you the details in my next post, but they involve hospital bills, insurance, financial assistance, and taxes.
I realized how important it is to track certain information and how hard it can be to complete documents if your information isn’t organized. The situation also made me stand up to my inner pack rat and figure out quicker and easier ways to track important information so that I don’t have to put my life on hold for weeks to find what I need.
The first hacking project we’ll start is corralling all of that information so that it doesn’t rule us anymore. We’ll build a system and a process for making our information work for us until the other way around.
System – how we’re going to store the information
Process – how we’re going to keep the information up-to-date
In my next post, I’ll fill you in on my information crisis, and then we’ll start putting together our information so that you’re better prepared than I was.
