Working in healthcare has been my passion since I was a child.  I had chronic strep throat infections with many visits to the doctor and when I was 10 had a severe infection with Epstein Barr, leading to mononecleosis which kept me out of school for 4 months.  My healthcare team were my heroes – they got me feeling well again and were there to support me when I needed it.  I knew then that I wanted to help others in the same way and became a candy striper at 13, a pharmacy technician at 18 and then finished my nursing degree when I was 21 years old.  A shoulder and back injury made nursing to retirement not feasible, and so I returned to my pharmacy roots and graduated Mercer University in 2010 with a concurrent MBA, hoping to one day open my own pharmacy.

I’ve also struggled with chronic joint pain since I was a child.  I can remember barely being able to make a fist on cool mornings when I was just 5 years old and had my first steroid injections in my hips at 18.  They told me I was “too flexible” and to stop doing yoga.  I didn’t listen.  The pain though never really ceased and after injuring my shoulder it felt like someone was constantly tapping to get my attention and it was driving me crazy.  I tried neuromuscular stimulation,  physical therapy, chiropractic, narcotics, gabapentin (which really did make me crazy – ask my old roommate); nothing really worked, although they would take the edge off a bit.  Finally in the midst of anxiety attacks after my dad passed away and just before COVID hit, I started duloxetine which is an antidepressant but with some pretty impressive nerve pain relief benefits.  All was great until I decided to wean off in 2023.  I spent 6 weeks wondering if I were ever going to be normal again – my head felt so heavy I had to physically hold it up when looking at the computer at work.  I had severe vertigo and it felt like my body just kept moving long after I had physically stopped and I was jumpy like my nervous system had been set aflame, which I guess it had been.  

The whole process of weaning from duloxetine is ultimately what brought me to Functional Medicine.  I researched any and every thing I could to get myself well.  I couldn’t believe that I had been recommending this medication to patients as an alternative for their pain when the side effects of coming off were so severe.  Clearly this had been wrecking havoc on my body in a way that I was never aware.  So I began to get to the root of the problem.  For me, it was largely inflammation based, and as I started to focus on my gut health, quality sleep and stress reduction the transformation was immediate and intense.