| When
bad things happen to Constance Miller of Seattle, Washington, she blazes
a trail through them and then pulls others along behind her. As a career
advocate of human rights and accessible health care, Miller has solved
her own health problems and helped thousands of others who share the same
predicament.
When
a Dalkon Shield caused her illness and injury, Miller became one of the
nation's foremost experts on the Shield and its effects on women's health.
Miller’s work on behalf of Shield-injured women has been featured in national
magazines such as Ms. Essence, and Woman's World. Miller has
assisted thousands of women to recover millions of dollars in compensation
for their Dalkon Shield injuries. She staffed a non-profit help line that
assisted injured individuals.
In
1982, a car accident left her with a "closed-head" brain injury; there
was no visible wound, but she was experiencing pain, memory loss, disorientation,
visual, sleep and mood disorders. Most physicians told people who were
having such symptoms after accidents that they were imagining them. Upon
receiving such a diagnosis from her doctor; Miller went into research mode
and uncovered the secrets of the changes she recognized in herself.
She
applied what she learned from her brain injury research and her activism
to selecting her doctors and lawyers. Such deliberate and pragmatic partnering
led to effective, client-centered rehabilitation program and a gratifying
resolution for her injury claim.
Miller
has put everything she's learned into a self-help guide called From
The Ashes. She also created and runs
the
Head Injury Hotline to
advise people on the syndrome, on good care providers, on legal options,
and on social and career services available to them. Miller also spends
a great deal of time educating health care providers and attorneys about
closed-head injuries. Recently, she testified before the U.S. National
Institutes of Health concerning Traumatic
Brain Injuury Rehabilitation.
"We
are in the early stages of a transformation that will lead to the real
practitioners of medicine --being the lay person in the family, and
in the community-- and we health professionals can be
coaches and supporters of self-care."
-- Tom Ferguson, MD
Founder
of Medical Self Care Magazine;
Medical
Editor of the Millennium Whole-health Catalogue;
Author
of Health On-Line, Addison Wesley, 1996
|
