  Joy Wagner RN BSN Joy Wagner is the founder of fitMS, an innovative healthy lifestyle program for people with MS. FitMS includes exercise classes that combine the best of Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, and Stability Ball for people with balance and fatigue issues. FitMS classes also provide peer support and stress reduction techniques. The classes are very helpful for people with Parkinson's and other conditions that impair balance as well. In November 2004, Joy was honored with the MS Leaders of Hope Award in the category of Mobility at the National MS conference in Denver. Joy is an ACE faculty member and the fitMS instructor training seminar is an ACE approved CEC course. Joy has a degree in the science of nursing from the University of Iowa. She has practiced nursing and taught in the health field since 1982. Her hospital experience is in acute pediatric care at the University of Iowa, where she worked with neurosurgery, oncology, open-heart surgery and transplant patients up to age 5 years old. She worked in the ICU at Childrens Memorial Hospital when she returned to Chicago. Joy left the ICU to case manage the home care of ventilator dependent children for Childrens Home Health Care until she had children of her own. Currently, Joy works as an MS nurse, teaching patients to do their self injections and helping patients manage their side effects, site reactions and other aspects of life with MS. Though Joy was first correctly diagnosed with MS in 2001, she had actually been living with the symptoms since at least 1994. She spent the last two years searching for the best methods to rebuild her own balance, strength, flexibility, coordination, and nutritional and emotional health. Ms. Wagner developed fitMS in order to share what she has learned with other MS patients. Joy lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago and is the single parent of two amazing daughters, ages 14 and 17. | |
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