I began my journey in healthcare almost 20 years ago after suffering with several years of unexplainable illness and debilitating symptoms. Diagnoses of melanoma in situ, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and depression derailed my academic career at UVA and left me grasping for straws. As I fumbled my way back to normalcy, I quickly realized doctors didn’t have answers for these conditions. So I began exploring nutrition and natural healing.
Through changing my diet, I became functional enough to start anew, and felt led to pursue nursing – I was determined to bring my story to others and help them get well too. After graduating at the top of my class from Bon Secours Memorial School of Nursing, I started my professional journey at St. Mary’s hospital in 2009. My hospital career was spent in critical care and neuroscience where I saw the most devastating effects of our broken healthcare and food systems. I will always remember caring for a patient who had suffered a massive right MCA stroke, after neglecting his diagnoses of hypertension and diabetes. As I was scanning his medications, his family arrived bringing in a hot dog and Mountain Dew for the patient’s lunch. Lucky for him, he could still swallow. Unlucky for him, he was consuming the poison that had done this to him in the first place.
In 2011, I began my pursuit as a Nurse Practitioner, feeling I wasn’t really helping anyone in the hospital – it was just damage control. I knew if I could get into primary care, that’s where I could make a difference. And that I did. I love working in general medicine. The variety of concerns I must be knowledgeable of, the relationships I develop with my patients, the moments where I can really teach them something about nutrition and lifestyle – it’s all so gratifying. But it’s all still so broken. Ten minutes is not enough. Bureaucratic requirements to prove I am following “guidelines” that I don’t see actually improving patient outcomes is soul-sucking.
All the while, I continued to pursue more knowledge in integrative and function medicine and nutrition. In 2018, I obtained a post masters certificate in integrative health and nutrition from MUIH, and during Covid, when the failings of our medical system were laid bare, I earned a health coaching certificate from ITN. I am now Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition®️ and finally ready to help others break free of the system I couldn’t fix.
East River Wellness is an Integrative Health & Nutrition Practice born out of a need to save myself that transformed into a passion to help others do the same. Together through investigative medicine, expert advice, coaching, and education YOU can move toward a life of wellness.