Episode #4: Step 2: Collaborate – Our Stories

This post contains affiliate links. Click here to see what that means! In order to support our blogging activities, we may receive monetary compensation or other types or remuneration for our endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this blog. That being said, we only promote authors, products, and services that we wholeheartedly stand by! Welcome to The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast Season 1! We’ve created this podcast as a free resource to accompany our upcoming book, The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook: A DIY Guide to Living Well with Chronic Illness. Episode #4: Step 2: Collaborate – Our Stories is centered on what collaboration with your healthcare team should look like and how that has realistically played out for us in our own journeys (hint: it was messy!). We discuss the types of healthcare practitioners out there and what it means to take responsibility for leading the collaborative effort in your own care. We even chat about nitty-gritty topics that aren’t often touch-on, like firing a provider, recognizing the need for medications or surgery, and the toll that medical debt can take on a person with chronic illness. Again, this is a personal episode, but meant to help our listeners be able to see this step on the wellness journey through an honest lens. If you’d like to go more in-depth on Step 2: Collaborate, check out the “Evaluating Potential Providers Checklist” or the “Prioritizing Action Infographic,” both in Chapter 2. The checklist can help you ask the right questions as you seek to build a collaborative healthcare team, while the infographic helps you look at all the suggestions from Chapters 1 and 2 and then logically move forward on only those areas that are high priority for you. How to listen: If you’d like to have our podcasts sent directly to your device, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher! If you’d like to download the .mp3, you can do so by following this link. If you’d like to play the episode right now in your browser, use the player below! Show Notes: 0:00 Intro 3:00 What is Collaborate? 3:56 Mickey shares when she recognized collaborative care was necessary The term “key player” is mentioned here, for more detail see the “How Do You Build A Collaborative Team” section of Chapter 2. 6:30 Taking responsibility for leading collaboration in your care 8:10 Describing the types of practitioners (understanding this allows you to choose the right people for the job, more detail can be found in Chapter 2) Licensed Conventional Medical Licensed Natural Medical Licensed Complementary-Care Non-medical, Non-Licensed 10:00 Angie talks about her experience integrating care 11:50 Patient lead open communication with providers 13:50 Mickey talks about firing practitioners 17:55 The need for medication and/or surgery and our experiences Where Medication Fits on a Healing Diet 21:40 How to navigate healthcare spending 25:15 Mickey shares about the toll medical debt took on her and her family 29:00 Angie explains how medical debt stirred her to action in her journey 31:20 Realistic look at transitioning a budget to focus on food/self-care 34:13 Your homework for Step 2, Collaborate! Take a look at the “Prioritizing Action Infographic” in Chapter 2 of The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook to prioritize areas explored in Chapter 1 and 2, before moving on to the next steps in the wellness journey. 35:34 Outro Wait–before you go! If you enjoyed the podcast, would you mind leaving us a review in iTunes? This helps introduce our work to a new audience as we climb the ranks in their system. The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast is a complimentary resource to our forthcoming book, The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook: A DIY Guide to Living Well with Chronic Illness. Support us in our mission to revolutionize how autoimmune disease is viewed and treated by pre-ordering your copy today! Pre-order your copy: // Amazon // Barnes & Noble // iBooks // Books-a-Million // Indiebound // Powell’s Check out the previous episode, Episode #3: Sarah Ballantyne, PhD on Getting Informed, and the next episode, Episode #5: Titus Chiu, DC on Practitioner Collaboration. For the full podcast archive, click here. The post The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast Episode #4: Step 2: Collaborate – Our Stories appeared first on Autoimmune Wellness.