Shirley Abriola knows more than most about living with physical disability. Born with cerebral palsy and a fiery personality, Shirley found a way to channel her physical limitations into a strong voice to champion a better way to deliver health care services to women with disabilities.
It was eight years ago while Shirley was rehabilitating after surgery at Magee. “I was feeling depressed,” Shirley recalls. “Those caring for me were really good at the medical end, but sometimes I felt they forgot me as a woman who had a whole set of new issues to deal with after surgery. So I told them how I felt.”
AT RIGHT: Shirley Abriola pets Pierre, the 11-year-old cat who rules the Monroeville roost she shares with her parents. “Animals sometimes seem to know more about disabilities than people do,” she says. “For instance, he knows to come around to my left side because that’s the hand I can best pet him with.”
To Shirley’s surprise, her health care team was listening to her. Even leaders at Magee listened to her. “They took what I said and did something about it. A bad thing in my life helped to bring a good thing.”
With input from Shirley and a number of women with disabilities in the Pittsburgh area, Magee opened its barrier-free Health Care Center for Women with Disabilities in 2001. To make the whole health care experience more comfortable and dignified, the Center is equipped with special lifts to assist women who are in wheelchairs, exam tables that raise and lower, and a mammography unit that lowers so that the test can be performed while the woman is sitting in a wheelchair. Even special leg stirrups that move hydraulically and provide extra padding and support during gynecologic exams are used to make women feel more comfortable and secure.
At the Magee center, women with disabilities don’t feel shut out of the health care system that they depend on. Shirley, a licensed social worker, credits Magee’s openness to women with special needs for bringing genuine respect to all women seeking health care. The Center’s staff was developed and educated with the same philosophy of respectful attention to each woman’s unique needs.
As Shirley explains, she didn’t just “get her wheel in the door,” but continues to advocate for women with
disabilities. And Magee continues to listen through an advisory committee for the Center that brings Shirley and others with disabilities together with health professionals for bi-monthly meetings where they can discuss ways to further improve care.
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