Introduction

There I was, just a few years into my private practice. I was working the typical long hours of a doctor, rushing through each day with little thought for myself, when I found out I had multiple fibroids (benign tumors) in my uterus. Soon, the pain and irregular bleeding affected everything I did. Rather than listen to my body, I decided a hysterectomy would solve the issue. After all, that was what traditional medicine had taught me.Diagnose the problem, then fix the problem without delving into the cause of the problem.

At that point, I was still in a “rush” mindset. Everything was rushed. I needed to rush to get a hysterectomy. I needed to rush to be back to work in two weeks. All I could think of was fixing the issue as quickly as possible. I thought the fast way was the bestway.

Boy, was I wrong.

During the surgery, the doctors discovered I had lived through a ruptured appendix. By some miracle, my body had healed itself from the appendicitis and walled off the area to protect my body from the infection. This miracle saved my life but also left behind a diseased, scarred area in my abdomen. Clearly, I had somehow learned to live with extreme inflammation and discomfort, and even thought of it as “normal.”

It took me many more years to recognize a simple truth: constant discomfort is not normal.

During the hysterectomy, the doctors attempted to fix the old, diseased area of my intestines and accidentally nicked (cut a small hole in) my bowels. From that point forward, my medical journey began. I was in the hospital three different times, for a total of forty days, and could not work for almost five months. I ended up losing almost thirty pounds and became severely anemic, with a hemoglobin of about eight (should be above twelve). My muscles atrophied as my body “ate” my own muscle to stay alive. At one point, I had pneumonia. At another, I had an allergic reaction to an anesthetic that nearly killed me. The list goes on: an abscess in my abdomen, a blood clot in my left arm, an IV feeding tube for over three months.

I was weak, frail, fatigued, and closer to death than I care to admit.

On the outside, before this happened, I was a seemingly healthythirty-eight-year-old woman, and yet I almost didn’t come out alive. The entire experience was humbling, to say the least.

As horrible as the experience was, I am eternally thankful for having had it. That may sound strange to say, but getting close to death finally woke meup.

My Journey in the Health Care World

Today, I am an integrative medicine physician with a thriving practice in Murrieta, California. As an integrative physician, I evaluate the whole person and focus on prevention and getting to the root cause of the medical issues a patient is having. Integrative medicine is a proactive arm of medical care. I did not al