Thirty years later, Liz Helms still remembers the way her doctor looked at her when she described the severe pain she was experiencing around her jaw—the limited facial movement and frequent muscle spasms, and feeling like she was being struck by lightning again and again. “I could see it in his face—he either wasn’t listening or didn’t believe me,” she says.
Helms—who has a temporomandibular joint disorder—spent a year and a half fighting for the right