Why I Do This Work

I didn't set out to work in healthcare. I wasn't even looking for answers when I finally found them.

For a few years in college and after, I had a collection of symptoms that didn't add up to anything anyone could name. Numbness and tingling on one side of my face, one foot. Fatigue. Other things that seemed unrelated. I went through a large hospital system — a neurologist, an ENT, a primary care doctor, a brain MRI, a chest x-ray. Each specialist was working within their own lane, ruling out what fell within their scope. Nobody was looking across the whole picture. Something was definitely not normal, a neurologist told me, but they didn't know what. Come back if it gets worse.

So I learned to live with it. Stopped expecting answers. Got on with things.

By my mid-twenties I knew I probably should have a primary care doctor and hadn't gotten around to it. A friend had just started seeing someone new and spoke highly of her, so I made an appointment to establish care. I wasn't expecting much, just what I assumed would be a standard medical visit. The clinic's website wasn't good, and the location wasn’t overly convenient (though stil reasonable), but my friend's recommendation was strong enough that I went anyway.

That appointment was different from any I'd had before. The doctor asked more questions than I'd ever been asked. She looked at the whole picture. She suspected a thyroid issue and ordered labs. She was right. I had Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an autoimmune thyroid condition.

The months that followed were a lot. Removing gluten is a recommended part of managing Hashimoto's for many people, and I was also working through an elimination diet and getting my thyroid levels regulated. It took up a lot of my mental and emotional energy to manage the changes. But gradually, I started noticing something: the symptoms I'd carried for years were gone. The numbness. The tingling. The fatigue. The things I'd learned to live with. As I learned more about Hashimoto's and how it can present, it became clear that it had very likely been the thread connecting everything all along. No one had looked for it earlier — partly because awareness of autoimmune disease was only beginning to grow, and partly because each specialist had been focused on ruling out what was in their scope. No one had been looking at the whole picture.

What changed after that

Once I knew what I was dealing with, I became more intentional about every provider I saw. I knew what a good appointment felt like now. I knew the difference between a provider moving through a checklist and getting me out the door and one who was actually thinking about me specifically. And I knew, from my own experience and from others navigating similar conditions, how hard it is to find the second kind.

I was already working in design and marketing. And the more I looked at provider websites while trying to find my own care, the more frustrated I got. They never seemed to give me what I was actually looking for. I couldn't tell from a website whether this provider would take me seriously, whether they thought about things differently, whether it was worth the time and money and emotional energy to make an appointment and find out. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew exactly what I wished those websites had instead.

As much as possible I tried to get referrals from existing trusted providers and from people I knew. Outside of that, I read Google reviews carefully and hoped there were enough specific, detailed ones to give me a real sense of what to expect. The website was rarely enough on its own.

How I ended up here

I'd been a patient at a clinic I trusted and knew they had someone doing part-time marketing and design work. I had it in the back of my mind that I'd love a job like that if it ever opened up. A couple of years later that exact position did, and in a full-time capacity, and I went for it.

The work I did there touched things that mattered: the website, patient handouts and forms, blog posts written by providers to educate their patients, events the clinic hosted to help people understand their own health. I was making the things that helped patients feel seen and prepared, and it gave me a clearer picture of what it looks like when a practice genuinely tries to communicate well with the people it serves.

I knew along the way that I eventually wanted to do this independently, to help the practices that didn't have the budget or need for a full-time person but still needed someone who understood both sides. When the pandemic hit and I was furloughed for a few weeks, I had the space to get honest with myself about it. I knew when I went back that I wasn't planning to stay for long. I made a plan, and when the time felt right, I left to start my own business. That was the beginning of this.

Why it still matters

There are patients out there right now who are still in the part of the story I was in before that appointment. Who have been told their results are normal, or who have gotten just enough validation to know something is wrong, but still have no answers and no one helping them find them. Who have learned to live with things they were never meant to just live with. Who have been disappointed enough times that hope is something they're careful with.

Most of them are looking for a provider who already exists — someone who will look at the whole picture, ask better questions, and take them seriously. And many of them don't even know yet that that kind of provider is out there.

And for a patient who has been let down before, deciding to try again is brave. Putting yourself on a wait list (because the good providers often have them) and holding onto enough hope through the uncertainty to actually show up when the time comes. That requires something to hold onto. Something that says: this one will be different. This is worth the wait.

The providers who can offer that experience exist. Most of them just need someone to make that clearer from the outside. That's the part I can help with.