Muddy Mag

Introduction to Muddy Care

By Claire, CEO of Muddy Care

Welcome to our first edition of our Muddy Care Community Magazine. My name is Claire and I am the founder and CEO of Muddy Care CIC. I am immensely proud of what Muddy Care CIC has and is achieving as we grow and am thrilled that it is our Muddy Young Persons Liaison Officer, Jack who is leading the production of our community magazine with the support of our Muddy Social Media Officer, both of whom are young people with chronic conditions.

My vision for Muddy Care is for our chronic condition community to take active roles within our Muddy community and to lead small scale projects. Muddy Care was designed for people of working age, 18-65 years of age, with chronic and long-term health conditions, by someone with chronic health conditions, to be steered by our Muddy community… and that I am so pleased to announce is exactly what is happening.

What is Muddy Care and What are We Doing?

Muddy Care Community Intrest Company is a not for profit, specialist educational health and wellness service and community, for people of working age with chronic and long-term health conditions, disabilities and now Long Covid. Managed and delivered by professional education managers, teachers and outdoor educationalists. Muddy Care provides health and wellness tools, exercises, activities and strategies to help people manage their conditions more effectively and independently. Our provision includes outdoor education rehabilitation programmes, online educational services (our website, Vlogs, pod casts and webinars) and a lifelong support & care community.

Muddy Care was founded and born through my own adversity. At 37 years of age my life was devastated by illness. After four years of fighting my long-term illness without any professional rehabilitation support (the NHS are only commissioned for rehabilitation services for people with long term brain and spinal injuries and some pain conditions) I began meeting more and more people significantly struggling alone with their chronic conditions without any support either, I decided that this was both unacceptable and something I could change...Muddy Care was born.

From then I started to design and write an adaptive outdoor education rehabilitation programme.

Through a variety of adaptive outdoor activities combined with integrated outdoor educational workshops relating to holistic health and wellness and chronic condition, Muddy Care would teach people with long term and chronic health conditions tools and strategies to help them live well more independently and have brighter futures.

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In 2017 I approached a colleague, who like me is also a professional educator, an outdoor professional and a retired GB athlete. He has also had a life changing injury. He came on board as the coeducational manager and Muddy Care started to become a reality. In 2019 we secured funding for a long-term pilot that has only just finished. The impact data from our long-term pilot is remarkable, Muddy Care has truly helped to change lives.

Muddy Care has been built to serve the chronic and long-term condition community but also to support the NHS. We fill a gap that they cannot financially support.

Today we are expanding our outdoor education rehabilitation programmes within the South Powys, Swansea and Cardiff areas (keep looking on our website and latest news for updates) and we have two new exciting pilots in progress. We are currently working on Phase 1 of a project specifically designed for the clinically extremely vulnerable as we know first-hand the adverse impacts that COVID has had on this sector of our community as both myself and our Muddy Care Young Persons Liaison Officer were asked to shield.

Our Graduate Rehabilitation Programme started in October 2021 for participants who have been on our long-term pilot for two years. We are also starting our online services from this Autumn with webinars, podcasts and vlogs. Our community is growing. We have recently appointed a Muddy Care Young Persons Liaison officer, Jack and a Muddy Care Social Media Officer, Phoebe .

Muddy Care is acutely aware of how many young people are out there, coping with living with chronic and long-term conditions alone and we are developing support services specifically for this sector of our community.

In 2022 we are starting our residential service where we will offer holistic health and wellness residentials to people with chronic and long-term conditions in the beautiful Brecon Beacons and gorgeous Gower Peninsula.

Welcome to Muddy Care.

Chronic and long-term conditions can be life breaking but with Muddy Care, we help you glue yourself back together and make your futures brighter.

Overview

By Jack, Young Persons Liasons Officer We have just had an introduction from Claire.

Working with Claire as the co-education manager on the outdoor education rehabilitation programmes is Lee.

Newest team members I’m Jack, the newly appointed muddy young person’s liaison officer, my roles include creating webinars, podcasts, and vlogs along with the managing the content for the quarterly magazine.

Phoebe is our new muddy social media officer, she is responsible for the social media content creation, video editing, supporting webinars/podcasts and design and aesthetics for the quarterly magazine.

Muddy Recipe As part of our quarterly magazine we are introducing a section called ‘Muddy Recipe’, each edition will have a new healthy recipe for you to try out.

This recipe comes from C2 one of our Muddy participants who is part of our long term rehabilitation programme pilot. She is extremely proactive in her personal nutrition support and is both creative with her ingredients and recipe ideas. This is one of her tried and tested recipes.

“I have so many healthy recipes, but wanted to choose one that can hopefully, be adapted to anybodys taste/ dietary requirements. I change what I put in them every time. Great for a healthy snack!I make a double batch and freeze most of them. I take them out as needed and they defrost really quickly.” – C2

Fridge Bars 1. Blitz - 1 banana, 2 tbsp of coconut oil, 2 tbsp of honey (optional 1 tbsp of peanut butter)

Coming Up Page 4 & 5

Claire and Jack will be looking at the benefits off e-cycling dicussing their personal experience of what electric biking has done for them.

Page 6 & 7

Inspirational person - Dave Watson, RDA - Brywgyn riding centre

Page 8 & 9 Upcoming News and Events & Footsteps Festival

2. Add a handful of raisins, oats, seeds, etc (the final mix needs to be quite thick) and mix 3. Press mixture into a tin that has been lined with greaseproof paper.

4. Chill in fridge for around one hour.

5. Finally, cut into potions and enjoy.

The fridge bars last a couple of days in the fridge or alternatively freeze them and have as and when.

Page 10 Testimonials & Contact information

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E-cycling - What electric biking has done for me.

By Claire, CEO of Muddy Care

I loved cycling. I have cycled since early childhood. Growing up in rural Nottinghamshire it was how you met up with your friends and cycling was very much part of our collective socialisation activity. I used cycling as a training activity when I was competing for Great Britain in white water rafting. In recent years, I have had a road bike, a mountain bike and a shopper that I adore. Just before I became seriously ill in 2011, I was discovering the enjoyment of multi day cycling.

My heart was very seriously damaged in 2011 from a virus, so much so that in early 2012 I was diagnosed as going into the early stages of heart failure. Cycling and I began a very different relationship then. After 18 months of completing a rehabilitation programme that I designed and delivered for myself by myself, I got myself out of the early stages of heart failure but my relationship with my bike had become very different. Cycling became more and more arduous for me as my chronic health conditions worsened. I could no longer cycle up inclines easily nor cycle long distances. I did a lot of bike walking. My heart has long term damage and although I manage the considerations of exercising with my heart condition well, my heart condition, kidney disease and auto immune disease have created significant chronic fatigue. Chronic fatigue is a tricky business to manage well and physical stress such as exercise can place my body under too much stress. It is a continuous juggling game. However, what has been the hardest thing is going out with my healthy friends who I know still struggle to understand my chronic conditions. Having to ask them to wait so often for me when sections that I used to do so easily, I no longer can became extremely upsetting for me. It got to the point that I started to cycle by myself more and more often as it was so much less painful for me. That way I could rest when I wanted (without feeling a burden) and ride shorter routes (10km became my maximum distance I could do without adverse effects). Cycling became an increasingly lonely activity though rather than the social activity I had grown up with.

Then in early 2020 I was introduced to electric(E) biking through the company Drover Cycles who Muddy Care works with. E biking changed my cycling world to one of freedom, enjoyment and I could cycle with people again in a very happy way.

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I could now cycle up hills with ease, whilst chatting and smiling. I don’t think I have been smiling much whilst I have been cycling in recent years. In the Summer of 2020, I began a project with Cannondale to promote e cycling for people with chronic conditions. However, I became very poorly again in the Summer of 2020 and have been unable to ride even on an e bike for over 12 months. That is how it is sometimes for me with the chronic conditions I have. In the Autumn of 2020, my beloved non e road bike went to a new good home as I waited to start my new healthier, happier relationship with my amazing new e gravel bike. I have only just started going out on my e bike. Last week I cycled down a steep hill to a beach in Pembrokeshire. On my non e bike I would have never considered this. That morning not only could I consider this as a possibility but I cycled up the steep hill from the beach with ease and smiling ear to ear.

E biking is such a fantastic innovation for people like us. It has had a profound effect on the participants on the Muddy Care programme too. Muddy Care is searching for funding to start an e bike health and wellness long term service with Drover Cycles in and around the Brecon Beacons. We have started to design route cards specifically for people with chronic conditions too. However, what I would really like the government to do (we are hoping the Welsh government will take a lead on this), is to subscribe e bike tokens to people who have chronic conditions all over the UK. People would take the token to their local e bike provider and go out on the bike at a significantly reduced cost. Even if people only got out once a month, it would have a positive impact on their health and wellness. It would start to help people realise how life changing both e cycling and doing exercise outside can be for our health and wellbeing. It would open up a new world to them, one of hope and positive change and motivate them to manage their chronic conditions in new improved ways. It may even help people appreciate that medication is important but it isn’t the only way to help manage the impacts of our conditions.

In 2022 Muddy Care is going to have an e bike festival for people with chronic conditions in the Brecon Beacons and the Gower Peninsula. So watch this space.

E-cycling - What electric biking has done for me.

By Jack, Young Persons Liasons Officer

I saw a television advertisment for e-cycling/electric biking around 5-10 years ago, this was my first-time hearing about this new way of biking. I have to say, it wasn’t something that initially caught my eye; to be honest, I was a little obnoxious and thought it was just another gimmick.

I've always been an enthusiast for cycling and mountain biking. However, when I was diagnosed with my chronic condition, I felt like I had to put most sports I loved behind me. Being fit and active seemed no longer possible, everything had come to a stop. This was extremely hard to come to terms and as expected affected my mental health greatly.

In 2019 I had my first experience of e-cycling. I joined ‘Muddy Care’ and got involved with a program they offered which involved e-cycling as one of the activities.

It had been a few years since I had been on a bike due to my chronic condition bringing everything to a holt, I was anxious and nervous. By this point most of my body has deteriorated from treatment, which left me with little idea of how I cope with e-cycling. Part of my chronic condition means that I suffer every day from a lack of basic balance and coordination, which had me questioning whether it would be possible to do this sort of activity because surely my balance would get in the way.

Thankfully this was not the case, I was given a e-trike to help my balance, just that minor adaption massively helped. Things were a bit jerky at first and certain muscles were clicking but this got easier minute by minute.

After the first 5 minutes I could not believe how good I felt about myself. My leg muscles which had been neglected for years suddenly started becoming my best friends!

Everything felt alien to me - in a good way. I felt like the old myself again. I was close to tears - tears of joy- because I didn’t feel like I’d ever feel this feeling again and now it was possible.

Realistically my energy levels are not the same as what they were prior to my chronic condition. As you can imagine going from years of little to no activity meant that my energy dropped off quite quickly, however with the ‘e-trike’ my dip in energy did not affect my performance as the bike maintains the speed for me while I can still enjoy admiring the scenery and me living in the Brecon Beacons adds to the overall experience I have to say.

The benefits of E-cycling for me have been life changing. It is hard to say what e-cycling has made more of an impact on, my mental or physical health but either way e-cycling has been great for me!

Hands down I would recommend e-cycling now to anyone! There are countless benefits and I’ve experienced them first-hand. If you are living with a chronic condition or just someone who wants an enjoyable actively, all I can say is go for it! The chances are you will end up saying to yourself “why didn’t I take this up sooner?”

Two words that sum up e-cycling for me are relief and joy.

I happy to say that my initial perceptions of e-cycling were wrong. E-cycling was not a gimmick after all.

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RDA - Bryngwyn Riding Centre

By Jack, Young Persons Liasons Officer Bryngwn Riding Centre first opened in 1975 and has been partnering with the RDA (Riding for the disabled association) for the last six years to provide an enjoyable riding experience that is carefully planned to meet the needs of every individual.

I started riding here with the RDA three years ago after my physio recommended the centre to help improve my balance and coordination.

My physio was not wrong, coming here and getting involved has been truly amazing and has made such an impact on both my coordination and balance!

I feel so at peace when I am riding, it is an escape, all my thoughts get blocked out. It is just me the horse and the instructor, and some days this is exactly what I need. Not only is this activity mentally great but I am also doing exercise that helps me strengthen my core. I am so thankful for Bryngwn riding centre and the RDA and really can’t recommend them enough!

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Inspirational Person - Dave Watson

By Jack, Young Persons Liasons Officer

I was fortunate enough to chat with the incredible Dave Watson, who is such an inspiration and is the perfect person to be featured for our quarterly inspiration person piece. Very excited to share his story with you.

Dave Watson joined the army joined the army age 20, with a goal to serve in the Scots Guards; one of the toughest fighting units in the British army - these guards also have the special honour of guarding at royal residents.

Dave’s first tour was in Afghanistan in 2010. This tour would go on to change his life forever. During a routine foot patrol Dave stepped on an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) this resulted in him losing an arm and both of his legs. Dave had always had a positive attitude and was not going to let this break him even though his life was going to look completely different.

Just weeks after the injuries Dave was back in the UK learning how to walk again, this time with prosthetic legs. Unfortunately, this journey was not straight forward, pain caused by the sockets resulted in Dave having to use a wheelchair for his mobility rather than walk. This left Dave feeling extremely frustrated as he had worked so hard learning to walk¬ again.

Dave was able to have a medical procedure performed in Sydney, Australia that would give him another chance of being able to walk again. Thankfully after months of intensive physiotherapy and rehibition enabled Dave to once again be able to use his prosthetic legs. This time there was no looking back, from this point a new life began, one full of ‘new and exciting opportunities.’

Despite all odds, Dave has gone on to compete in two Invictus games with Team GB. During his first games in 2017 he received bronze and gold medals in shot put and discus events. The following year he competed again, and this time receive medals from all four of his events, including two golds!

Alongside his sporting career Dave works as an ambassador for the Fisher House foundation, which offers a ‘home away from home’ for injured military personnel. Dave also does motivational speaking all over the UK, using his experience to help motivate others and helping people realise that ‘anything is possible, if you commit’.

Dave’s story is so inspiring, his positivity and strength of character are evident throughout his entire journey! In every circumstance Dave pushes the challenged the boundaries and found ways to use an incredible tough event for good.

Use this link to hear more about Dave’s incredible story told in his own words - https://www.dwmotivation.co.uk/my-story To find out more about fisher house and what they do follow the link below – https://www.hospitalcharity.org/fisherhouseuk

Image from - https://www.dwmotivation.co.uk

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News and Events

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Our long-term outdoor education rehabilitation pilot has just concluded with tremendous success. We would like to say an enormous thank you to Arwain, the Brecon Beacons National Park Sustainable Development Fund and the National Lottery for supporting this project.

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The participants will shortly be starting a pilot graduate education rehabilitation programme that continues to support them over the next 12 months.

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Supported by the Post Code Community Trust, we will shortly have a series of videos released to help people who are classified as clinically extremely vulnerable and those who have serious chronic conditions, move forwards positively in a COVID world. This project is being delivered by both our CEO and Muddy Young Persons Officer who are both classified as extremely clinically vulnerable.

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Supported by the National Lottery, we are delighted to announce that Muddy Care will shortly be piloting our short course outdoor education rehabilitation programmes with the Community Neurorehabilitation Service, Swansea Bay University Health Board.

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Supported by The National Lottery we have started our holistic health and wellbeing webinar and pod cast service. Please see our website for more details of dates and times.

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Supported by The National Lottery, we will shortly be starting a short course outdoor education programme for people who are classified as clinically extremely vulnerable in Swansea to help them improve their holistic health and wellbeing in a challenging COVID world.

Muddy-Mag Celebrates Every magazine we will celebrate an organisation that is working with our community.

This article we are celebrating the work of the footsteps festival which is co-led by one of our muddy participants.

The footsteps festival 2021- is a year long festival celebrating living well with pain and has been running since January 2021.The festival was conceived by a group of people who connected on twitter and is a true coproduction with no hierarchy. The core group includes those who live with pain with many and vaired conditions and personal characteristics, health care professionals which include physiotherapist, clinical psychologists, GPs, consultants and also academics and those working in pain research.

The festival is intirely online due to the current covid 19 pandemic. Its been highly successful so far and is gaining momentum.

Email - info@footsteps-festival.co.uk For more information go to there website https://my.livewellwithpain.co.uk/festival/explore-the-festival/

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