I grew up in the rust belt of Pennsylvania, with my single mother and three siblings.  Our house was typical for the Great Lakes: a loving home with a basement that smelled like mildew.  At the age of 7, I developed a chronic sinus infection that lasted for decades.  I went to the doctor, and was prescribed antibiotics.  The antibiotics helped momentarily, but the infection never fully went away.  I thought it was “normal” to have green nasal discharge, that worsened with every cold I caught.  It wasn’t painful, it was just annoying and I became a mouth breather.  There was simply no other way to breathe—my nose was clogged. 

As time progressed, the infection became worse.  It started to impact other organs in my body.  I began having double vision.  The sinuses are located adjacent to the optic chiasm, the nerves that send information from your eyes to your brain.  The chronic inflammation in my sinuses had begun to impact the space where my nerves are, and led to issues with my vision.  

Then I started experiencing severe vertigo.  While sleeping, when I turned over in bed, I would awaken with vertigo so intense, that I would have to run to the bathroom to relieve my upset stomach.  I went to the ER, and they told me that it was unrelated to my sinuses, did a bunch of lab tests including a CT scan of my brain, and told me everything was fine.  I was referred to an ENT doctor for my sinuses, an Ophthalmologist for my eyes, and even a neurologist for my vertigo.  More medications, and surgery was recommended.  Thanks, but not thanks.

I got tired of dealing with so-called specialists, that weren’t listening to me, and weren’t addressing the root cause.  I knew what the root cause was.  It was the mold exposure that had weakened my sinuses.  But the mainstream medical establishment ignored my pleadings, and spun me around in circles.

I decided then that my future career was in medicine.  If doctors couldn’t help me, I would help myself.  Graduating from high school, the University of Pennsylvania had the number 1 medical school in the entire country, so I decided that was where I would pursue medicine.  I studied hard, and worked at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, doing sleep research at the Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology.  I quickly realized that mold exposure is difficult to treat with the mainstream model.  Part of the problem lies in the reductionist view of medicine that is taught at most medical schools.  The other problem is in their lack of training to identify and treat chronic mold exposure.  I graduated with honors, and took a step back from medical school.

Then, I discovered Naturopathic Medicine.  After researching it some more, I realized that they were teaching medical students integrative healing modalities, beyond the pharmaceutical-based approach that was being taught at Penn.  This was it.  It aligned with my own goals of guiding patients to true healing, as opposed to slapping a bandaid on health concerns.