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Lisa Berry Blackstock is an independent patient advocate and mentor in national practice since 2008. Prior to entering the advocacy field, Lisa’s background covered the fields of writing and estate administration. |
Soul Sherpa® Healthcare Advocacy and Life Care Planning Services is Lisa’s current business, established in 2008 after she endured multiple misdiagnoses for what turned out to be a rare and painful nerve disorder, trigeminal neuralgia. She required corrective brain surgery to separate an artery compressing her left trigeminal nerve which caused intermittent electrical shocks to the left side of her face.
Lisa is a certified palliative care and hospice care specialist, and possesses an in-depth understanding of how politics and business forces have affected the way the current healthcare system affects all Americans, whether federally or privately insured, or uninsured.
As an undergraduate applicant to Stanford University’s Class of 1982 as a pre-med candidate, Lisa’s major changed but her interest in people’s health and quality of life have remained constant. She graduated Stanford in 1982 with a liberal arts major, but has worked in her own various businesses since 1990 where she enjoys engaging with people on a personal service basis.
Lisa’s training and expertise navigating the American healthcare system is the result of hands-on experience gained in the trenches. Accompanying her clients in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living centers, and in their homes, Lisa’s interaction with hospital administrative and medical staffs, as well as health insurance companies, has rendered her with a skill set that protects her clients physically, emotionally, and financially.
Lisa resides in Southern California with her husband, Bob. She enjoys high-altitude hiking and traveling in her free time.
Lisa is a certified palliative care and hospice care specialist, and possesses an in-depth understanding of how politics and business forces have affected the way the current healthcare system affects all Americans, whether federally or privately insured, or uninsured.
As an undergraduate applicant to Stanford University’s Class of 1982 as a pre-med candidate, Lisa’s major changed but her interest in people’s health and quality of life have remained constant. She graduated Stanford in 1982 with a liberal arts major, but has worked in her own various businesses since 1990 where she enjoys engaging with people on a personal service basis.
Lisa’s training and expertise navigating the American healthcare system is the result of hands-on experience gained in the trenches. Accompanying her clients in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living centers, and in their homes, Lisa’s interaction with hospital administrative and medical staffs, as well as health insurance companies, has rendered her with a skill set that protects her clients physically, emotionally, and financially.
Lisa resides in Southern California with her husband, Bob. She enjoys high-altitude hiking and traveling in her free time.
Personal Healthcare Experience :
Imagine being wakened in the middle of the night feeling a current of electricity pulse violently in your face. The day before you hiked eight miles in the mountains and felt great afterward. You were enjoying life, just the right age at 46, generally content and grateful with your life.
Without warning, a rare and devastating nerve disorder, trigeminal neuralgia, aka “the suicide disease” announced itself with a vengeance in November 2007. Given I felt pain in my upper and lower left jaw, I visited my dentist who sent me to my endodontist.
“Root canal, that’s what you need,” I was told. Five root canals later, I was in deeper pain and desperate. After being told by my endodontist there was no sensible reason for my ongoing pain, he suggested I “see someone and talk about what was going on in my life.” Never one to complain about pain, I knew my pain wasn’t imagined. I could hike Mount Whitney at 14,496 feet, in a single day.
I forged ahead, searching for my proper diagnosis and a treatment plan. I dragged myself to the School of Dentistry at UCLA in Los Angeles. It was there, four months after enduring ongoing, unexplained pain, at the Orofacial Pain Clinic, I was accurately diagnosed by a dentist who was also a professor at the School of Dentistry.
Unfortunately, treatment required corrective and complicated brain surgery to separate an artery from my sixth cranial nerve on the left side, my trigeminal nerve, at my brain stem. My medical insurer denied coverage for a neurosurgeon with experience in the procedure I needed. After I recovered, I appealed their denial and won. My neurosurgeon sent his patients to me for assistance with their insurance denials.
Before the field of patient advocacy was formally introduced to the American public with the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I set my sights on that path in 2008. I didn’t want another person to have to endure undiagnosed chronic pain that was real. I was, and remain, ready to fight a healthcare system unable to help those in similar situations.
In America, with its wealth of resources, my journey remains an unacceptable fate for any patient. This is my mission and passion: Ensure patients are accurately diagnosed and given access to the proper healthcare they require.
Without warning, a rare and devastating nerve disorder, trigeminal neuralgia, aka “the suicide disease” announced itself with a vengeance in November 2007. Given I felt pain in my upper and lower left jaw, I visited my dentist who sent me to my endodontist.
“Root canal, that’s what you need,” I was told. Five root canals later, I was in deeper pain and desperate. After being told by my endodontist there was no sensible reason for my ongoing pain, he suggested I “see someone and talk about what was going on in my life.” Never one to complain about pain, I knew my pain wasn’t imagined. I could hike Mount Whitney at 14,496 feet, in a single day.
I forged ahead, searching for my proper diagnosis and a treatment plan. I dragged myself to the School of Dentistry at UCLA in Los Angeles. It was there, four months after enduring ongoing, unexplained pain, at the Orofacial Pain Clinic, I was accurately diagnosed by a dentist who was also a professor at the School of Dentistry.
Unfortunately, treatment required corrective and complicated brain surgery to separate an artery from my sixth cranial nerve on the left side, my trigeminal nerve, at my brain stem. My medical insurer denied coverage for a neurosurgeon with experience in the procedure I needed. After I recovered, I appealed their denial and won. My neurosurgeon sent his patients to me for assistance with their insurance denials.
Before the field of patient advocacy was formally introduced to the American public with the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I set my sights on that path in 2008. I didn’t want another person to have to endure undiagnosed chronic pain that was real. I was, and remain, ready to fight a healthcare system unable to help those in similar situations.
In America, with its wealth of resources, my journey remains an unacceptable fate for any patient. This is my mission and passion: Ensure patients are accurately diagnosed and given access to the proper healthcare they require.