Patient Leader & Caregiver Accomplishments

So Awesome share

In June 2003 I fell off a cliff while rock climbing. At the time I did not have any health insurance. Due to not having any insurance the bill from the hospital was obscene. After doing some research, I discovered I had the right to call for a full audit of the bill. So for several hours one day a nurse/auditor from the hospital went through the bill line by line. Long story short, I was able to get the bill down to what my dad's insurance (at the time he was a 1 star general in the military) would have paid. Big self advocacy win I think.

I live with CPTSD and have been routinely dismissed for having "anxiety" when in fact it was decades of chronic pain due to endometriosis and fibroid tumors that ultimately left me bedridden for two years while I waited for surgery. I wrote a blog post about experiencing medical trauma as someone with CPTSD, and it caught the attention of an instructor at a medical school. She invited me to work with her students to help them understand what trauma-informed care is, and this project has been going on for a year now. If you had asked me at the time what would make it right, this is exactly what I would have suggested, and yet--this just fell in my lap! Yesterday was the biggest moment of my advocacy journey yet: I gave a three-hour lecture at a symposium at this med school, and it went really well! A lot of opportunities have been opening up lately, and I'm so happy to do something constructive and creative with sharing my experience as a patient to improve care.

I am happy to share my interaction with others.I am also proud of my contribution in sharing my story and moderating and replying to people's questions or situations.