My Story

As is the case with most providers who find themselves in the holistic realm, I too have my own personal health journey that led me down this path. It all started back in nursing school when some odd symptoms led me down a path of a diagnosis of Crohn's disease. The gastroenterologist told me that there was nothing I needed to change nutritionally because it didn't matter what I ate and only offered medications if need be in the future. This felt so wrong to say that what we are putting into our bodies couldn't have an impact. I saw a naturopathic doctor who advised a gluten-free, dairy-free diet and for many years I adopted this diet. I was able to heal this autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease with nutrition and lifestyle alone. To this day, my gastroenterologists are shocked that my colonoscopies do not show any traces of inflammatory bowel disease anymore and that it must have been misdiagnosed for me to have Crohn's disease even though I have biopsy reports that show this. In their mind, there is no possible way that working on nutrition could heal your gut, which is just mind-blowing to me! That was my first encounter with the pitfalls of traditional medicine.

In nursing school, I developed a passion for women's health and when I graduated as a nurse practitioner, my first job was in an OB/GYN office. I learned a lot here and got my first many years of experience under my belt before moving to a family practice office. Here, I broadened my experience into the general area family practice. During this time, I had a couple children, and for years, I had a constellation of strange symptoms and deteriorating health that I didn't get answers to from traditional medicine. I felt dismissed from my doctors, saying everything looked "normal," but inside I knew something was not right. I went on my own journey, stumbling onto functional medicine and holistic and nutritional ways of healing. I learned about the importance of gut health, the great impact that nutrition/lifestyle has on our health, as well as the impacts of our mind and nervous system dysregulation. I worked with a functional medicine practitioner myself and discovered what a unique and amazing new world this was. I worked through the challenges of having SIBO, gut dysbiosis, hormonal imbalance, inflammation, and mood disorders. My health got worse and I started breaking multiple bones in my body, which was the last straw that led me to an endocrinologist in a teaching hospital who finally was able to diagnose me with a rare disorder, Cushing's Disease. I had a brain tumor which caused my body to secrete large amounts of cortisol into my system which was slowly wrecking my body. In this sense, traditional medicine did and has saved my life, which does go to show that traditional medicine is great for the severe and acute things that can occur and we definitely need this as part of our overall health care but there are sometimes missing links in the areas that traditional medicine has not been as strong as such as health prevention and certain chronic conditions. Functional/holistic medicine alone could not have saved me from my condition, as surgery is the only true cure, but I am glad to have the knowledge of what it can do to help along the way.

Thus, I know that it it is important to have a balance of both traditional medicine and functional medicine play a part in the healing of patients. Along the way, I have gotten a functional medicine certification and continue to look at my patients through a lens of a functional medicine perspective and bring the knowledge of a more holistic view into my care. When I was working as a traditionally trained practitioner and having so many patients that I just could not provide the answers for and having a sense that there was more out there, led me to get my own certification n functional medicine. I enjoy having both a traditional background and being able to look at a patient holistically to try to help them on their journey now as well. I have been in the shoes as a patient who had very complex symptoms that traditional medicine alone could not solve as well as knowing what it feels like to not know what's going on with you but feeling like something is wrong. I never want one of my patients to feel like they're being dismissed. I might not always have the answers, but I am here to help my patients through their journeys, using both traditional and holistic methods as appropriate.