By Lisa Leighton
I love my work with our community members with PD. When I work with these folks, I see power, resourcefulness, and resilience. Thus far, I have had the pleasure of working with patients with varied backgrounds including artists, business men and women, homemakers, social workers, fire fighters, ministers, ship builders, and more. With each experience I take away something new that I can share with others, be it an alternate technique for putting on a pair of pants or a novel strategy to help gain control over episodes of freezing. It is their resourcefulness that helps me to stay fresh in continuing to support others in their pursuit of a better quality of life.
I frequently see their power, individually and as a whole, as I watch them take steps to gain control of their health, fight to maintain motivation, and support each other in their quest to find answers and achieve their greatest potential.
I also love the programs and treatments that we can offer to our community members with PD. This area feels like no other that I have worked in, where there is such great established and emerging research to demonstrate the effectiveness of what we can provide. I’m glad that we can show people clear numbers to validate their hard work and what it has accomplished in such a short period of time. Simply, it feels good to be able to provide feedback that reveals to my patients that they do, in fact, have control over their own bodies.
Below, you will find a list of the services that we have for patients with PD on both the Boothbay Harbor and Damariscotta campuses.
Boxing for Parkinson’s [Class is currently 1x/week on Monday at 9 am, but we are looking into adapting to make the time more accessible for more of our community members] – Instructed by Jenifer Wolfe, our Rock Steady Boxing certified PT.
LSVT LOUD – provided by Kristen Dolce, one of our Speech Language Pathologists, at both the St. Andrews and Miles campuses.
LSVT BIG – provided by myself and now with back up from two newly certified clinicians, Courtney Stover and Diane Brown. We are all OTs, and the program is offered at both the St. Andrews and Miles locations.
We have a Theracycle at the St. Andrews campus
*We are working with the CLC YMCA in Damariscotta to have a Boxing for Parkinson’s Class and a Theracycle available at their site, hopefully starting this Spring –again, it’s a work in progress, so more to come!
We have a year-round Parkinson’s Support Group, held at Chase Point on the Miles Campus in Damariscotta on the 1st Thursday of the month at 2pm- I facilitate this group.
We also host a Parkinson’s Support Group at the St. Andrews Campus during the summer months (June-August)- Kristen Dolce facilitates this group.
Lastly, I am currently working on starting a BIG FOR LIFE- LSVT BIG graduate class which I hope to roll out by or before January. The class will start out on the St. Andrews Campus, but depending on community interest, I will work to provide it on the Miles campus as well.
Lisa Leighton OTR/L works with Lincoln Health: St. Andrews Campus, Office: 207-633-1894
