BEHIND the MEDICINE
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The Path that Shaped my Medicine
If you had told my younger self where medicine would take me, I never would have believed you.
I spent more than a decade immersed in academia, searching for answers in science. Then life became the teacher.
I walked beside my father through stage IV brain cancer. I became a widow in my thirties. Within months, I lost my husband, my father, my dog, and the place I called home.
And somewhere between everything I had learned and everything I had lived, my understanding of healing changed.
But first, let’s go back……
Long before I became a doctor, I was a questioner.
Even as a child, I rarely accepted something simply because it was what everyone else believed. I was always looking beneath the surface, searching for what felt true.
That curiosity eventually led me into science, medicine, research and healing.
Looking back, I wasn’t just searching. I was learning how to see differently.
And that became the foundation of the doctor I am today.
The diagnosis…
In my early twenties, I was studying business when one weekend in 2002 changed everything.
My father suddenly struggled to speak. A scan revealed a tumor the size of a golf ball in his brain.
Stage IV. Terminal.
Three months to live.
Almost overnight, I became a caregiver and advocate, spending my nights buried in medical journals, searching for answers beyond what we were being told.
The odds of surviving ten years were less than 1%.
My father would go on to live for seventeen.
Going Beyond Statistics…
I couldn't accept that a statistic was the end of his story.
So I began researching relentlessly reading medical journals, exploring emerging approaches, and seeking out physicians and researchers willing to look beyond the prognosis.
That search changed the trajectory of my own life.
It planted the first seed that would eventually lead me to medical school and to the kind of medicine I practice today.
My father was given three months to live.
We were given seventeen more years.
Finding My Purpose
Eight years later, after completing my pre-med studies and earning my doctorate at Bastyr University…
I stood at UCLA’s brain tumor conference as an expert.
My father was sitting in the audience.
After sharing our journey, I realized I had stepped fully into the work I was meant to do.
Taking the Road Less Traveled…
While building my practice in California, I found a quiet place to write in a small village on the island of Crete.
Unexpectedly, I also found love.
I left California and began a very different life, one rooted in simplicity, nature, and a deeper exploration of healing.
Crete opened me to another side of medicine. Breath. Meditation. Stillness.
The connection between our inner world and our physical health.
It would change the way I understood healing forever.
What Medicine couldn’t Teach Me…
And then, everything changed again.
My husband’s cancer returned, beginning a two-year journey that took us across China and Austria in search of answers.
I became more than his wife. I became his advocate, researcher, caregiver, and the person beside him through impossible decisions.
And then, it was his time to go.
Within months, I lost my husband, my father, my dog, and the place I called home.
For so long, I had searched for answers. I had studied the science, questioned the statistics, and believed that if I looked deeply enough, there was always something more to find.
Loss taught me something medicine never could.
My Dark Night of the Soul…
In just three months, I lost my husband, my father, our dog, and our home.
I retreated to a cabin by a river.
Surrounded by the forest, craving stillness and truth, I dreamed of disappearing into the Himalayas or a monastery.
But I stayed.
I chose to turn my pain into purpose. I did the deep inner work, learning to be as fluid as water and rooted in presence.
That became my real healing, and my greatest training.
My Journey has Shown Me…
That statistics are simply motivation, not destiny.
Material wealth means nothing without health.
Every challenge holds a hidden gift, and true healing comes from following your heart and quieting your mind.
Change is constant…embrace it.
Nothing is impossible when you believe.
Faith is the strongest medicine.
Uncovering a Deeper Kind of Healing…
When I returned to clinical practice, I returned as a different doctor.
I had always been trained to treat the whole person. But my own journey taught me that the whole person goes far beyond the physical body.
Our thoughts. Our emotions. Our beliefs. Our nervous system. Our sense of meaning and connection.
They are all part of the healing story.
So my medicine began to change, too, bringing together science and nature, the physical and emotional, evidence and intuition.
I stopped asking only, “What is happening in the body?”
I began asking, “What is the whole person asking us to see?”
Which Brings Me to You
I come to this work as a doctor and scientist, a healer and meditator, a widow and a mother.
I have studied the body in textbooks and laboratories, in jungles and clinics, and I have experienced what it means to sit beside someone you love searching for answers, to face what cannot be controlled, and to rebuild a life after everything changes.
Those experiences have taught me to look beyond the diagnosis and see the whole person in front of me.
I bring the science. I trust the wisdom of the body and the knowledge of the ancients.